I have to admit, I had never come across the term ‘altitis’ until I discovered the wow blogosphere but I’ve adopted it completely as it so well described my own habit concerning alts. I have far too many and it’s hard to stop making more like some sort of weird complusive disorder. My other half, on finding out some of my cousins also played WoW commented “Oh he probably has an alt on your server, he has one on every server!” Now, as I pointed out at the time, this was a bit of an exaggeration - I have alts spread across a few servers, yes, but mostly level 1 characters made to speak to friends whom I met after rolling my mains. I wondered to myself why I kept rolling new characters and here are the things I came up with:
1. Boredom. Sometimes you just don’t want to play your main. You get bored of a certain quest chain, dailies, pvp, grinding, whatever. You just want to chill out and enjoy the easy life. This tends to lead to what I call the less-than-level-10 club. I roll a new character and play in the pre level 10 areas. It’s easy stuff, fun and you get that new-character rush along with a few low level spells / abilites you’ve never tried before! Of course after you’ve done this a few times and tried every class you’ve worn yourself out with the starting areas and it gets just as dull as being on your main.

2. So, you’ve got a few lowbie alts kicking about from the above forays into starting areas. One class has piqued your interest and you’re wondering “How would this class feel at 70?”. This is one of the two main draws for me with alts. I love reading and I love gathering information and experience about classes I’m not familiar with. I feel it helps me understand the difficulties others might have with certain things I do without me realising it or gives me ways in which I can make things easier for another class if we’re doing something together. In fact, I came across the wow blogosphere whilst researching things for my new toons - items and profession items from Kaliope’s Crafter’s Tome led to her blog and I found Mania’s Arcania via the oh-so-wonderful Petopia when I was researching the best hunter pets for my nublet hunter (Oh, ok, you got me - I was looking for the prettiest pet). BRK, too, was one of the blogs I came across on my search for information on my newest alt - he has some pretty awesome videos for starter hunters.Researching my new alts is a big draw for me and something I really enjoy about levelling an alt. I have knowledge of what’s to come to keep me going when the levelling gets dull and something to read whilst I’m grinding out the oh-so-slow 50’s. I don’t know why but it doesn’t gel for me in the same way if I just read up on another class - I’m a bit dense so I really need to experience it…

3. Professions. I’m addicted to them! I’ve tried everything to 360+ except tailoring and blacksmithing (none of those characters got high enough). When I’m sick of killing my millionth murloc /raptor / swamp lord I go and get a few skill points. It’s easier to grind rep knowing there’s a recipe at the end of it too! I really enjoy levelling professions and hate the fact I’m limited to two per character. I’m also one of these horrendously boring people who doesn’t like the horror that is playing-the-auction house so I need to have toons who gather which has sparked the motivation for at least some of my alts.
Of course, there is one downside and that is the repetitive nature of the game - once you’ve been through a set of quests which really bores you it’s sometimes a struggle to get past them again. I know, sometimes, when I’m aware there’s a particular quest chain or zone I’ve got to do soon which I don’t like it can stop me logging in on my alt. For instance - killing the Mistvale Gorillas in STV for their giblets. Sure, the Nessingwary ones seem repetitive but at least you’re guaranteed a length of time - x raptors = x time = quests done very qickly if you know what you’re doing. Quests which are based on rare drops, though such as the giblets one can mean a lot of boredom whilst grinding.

However! The recent addition of the new quests in Dustwallow Marsh have really helped to overcome a lot of this. Although I’ve done them all twice now I’m still finding them pretty enjoyable as they have a bit more character to them than a lot of the other mid-level quests. There’s also the chance of coming across quests you’ve never done before. I’ve currently just taken Dryn past Arathi Highlands and, even though I’ve done that zone with multiple characters on both sides… I never knew there was a quest hub down in the bay behind Stromgarde! Every time I’ve levelled I think I’ve found a new quest or even set of quests via guides, links from quest commentaries on the various wow info sites or just simply going further along a quest chain than I did the time before (usually I drop a quest if it goes grey and so miss out on the end part).

There are some really beautiful quest lines which I’ve found by accident - such as the one concerning Sully Baloo in Wetlands / Arathi - which are in out-of-the-way places or simply hard to find even in commonly visited places.

I’m sure I’ve missed something, but I guess those are (mostly) the ’symptoms’ of my own case of altitis.