BB #5 – Me, Myself and I

This month’s topic comes to us from Mynxee of Life in Low Sec. She asks "Alts and Metagaming: Is playing two accounts who are logged in at the same time and work together (hauler/miner, explorer/combat associate, trade alts in trade hubs) a form of metagaming that is ‘ruining the game’?"

This might be true in other games, though I cannot think of a good example at the moment. But in Eve it’s just very handy to have a sidekick ! Also the game lends itself much better than other mmorpg’s. The client is not too heavy on the computer’s resources and you can easily run 2 or even 3 windows at the same time. Windowed mode works fine, so you can easily switch between them. Furthermore, a lot of activities where you can use an alternative character, aren’t too stressful that you have to keep your eyes and hands on the keyboard all the time, like in some other games where you need to press keys all the time and have to resort to technical utilities and tools in order to sync your movements.

morp_bela

So for what purposes do you use another account ? Quite a few possibilities come to mind. From my own experience, the idea behind my alt was to pursue another career in Eve and have her go another direction. A combat alt who would do pirating and maybe even go to 0.0, while Morph was missioning and doing industrial stuff in Empire.

But somehow that plan never worked out. The combat part did though, she can fly Gallente, Caldari and Amarr ships very well (Minmatar are next on the list). But she now aids me in missions, and hauls in mining or does some other transports for me.

Another good usage is Factional Warfare. A fw alt to get the grips on pvp, who is financially supported by the main is a nice way to go and enjoy other areas of the game. I did this for a while and it works out fine.

In Eve it seems a lot of people use more than one account. It’s almost as if the game was intended that way (Power of two comes to mind). The thing is, that you can only have one character in training at any time. In wow you can level up a druid, a hunter, a pally etc, but in Eve you can only train one. The other two character slots can be used for research, or a market checker in Jita, but nothing that can be used very well. So if you want to do something else, like doing industrial and combat etc, it takes a very long time for your main to become proficient in both areas, and that’s where the multiple accounts come in.

To answer the question is this “ruining the game”: no I don’t think so at all. It actually enhances it quite a bit. Especially mining is much easier, and running missions gets a lot more convenient as well. And it’s not like you don’t need other people, the game is much nicer while in a good corp and participate in group activities, but if you have an extra account, it makes it more enjoyable as you’re not dependant on other people to do things you otherwise would have a hard time doing !

Blog Banter #5 participants:

More to come as they are posted !

22 thoughts on “BB #5 – Me, Myself and I”

  1. Great sum up about alts. I enjoy reason others’ perspectives and I like the picture yo!

  2. Glad I’m not the only one that thinks this way! Long live the alts! lol

    Though I’d just like to point out (have to do it every time i see it, lol…can’t help myself) that saying training in eve is different to leveling in WoW isn’t really true. Just like in eve, you can only ‘level’ one character at a time in WoW also…

  3. My exploration diva and my hauler/cyno alt reside on the same account; early on in the hauler’s life the explo diva’s training got interrupted so the hauler could get to where I needed her regarding industrial ships. I didn’t mind doing that, because by then, the explo alt was so far along that it was not a big deal to interrupt her training. These days, my alts don’t work “together” in too many scenarios; instead, they are all doing complimentary things aimed at support Mynxee’s pirating lifestyle and the Hellcats corp agenda.

  4. @mynxee, thats another interest way to let you explore more parts of the game that you otherwise wouldnt be able to !

  5. I LOVE THE ALT PICTURE. MAY I HAVE YOUR PERMISSION TO USE IT FOR THE FRONT COVER OF A NOVEL I’M NAMING, “ME, MYSELF & I”?

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