alt love

Early on in my WoW career I was weary of my alts. Sunblossom was my bread and butter, and it took only casual observations that she could accumulate wealth much faster than a brand new character could, and thus could easily twink out a new character -- even in only minor amounts -- which would be much faster than "legitimately" levelling that character from scratch.

Now that I'm raiding and Sunblossom has a full set of purpz (though, I am still using the Scryer Bloodgem, but its one of the best +spell hit trinkets in the game, so it doesnt count) my "progression" focuses have narrowed. I cant be raiding all the time, because they are scheduled only for specific nights. 5-mans no longer give me gear that I can use, and I dare not do heroics outside of my guild as PUGing is rampant with idiocy. I don't care to do PVP at all -- TF2 satisfies those urges quite nicely. This limits the current activities I can do with Sunblossom:

Questing - My log is currently full of 21 group/dungeon quests that need to be completed. A lot of the time I'm too busy to get people together to help me to do those. Besides the last few Ethereum quests I have left to do, the only zone thats left for me to quest is Shadowmoon Valley, and I dare not start that with only 4 free quest slots.
Reputation Grinding - I'm exalted with Scryer and Kurenai, but I really need to get Sha'tar and Cenarion Expidition down
Epic Fyling Training - :(
Grind Enchanting to 375 - :( :(
Grind Fishing to 375 - :( :( :(... at least until I get a boxed set of some TV show I want to watch, then fishing is fun to do.

None of these are that fun right now. Plus, recently I've been feeling the itch to re-experience the lower level content, and with a super powered main that can buy a few peices off the AH for them every now and then and fun their lvl 40 mount expenses, why not!? The increased level curve makes this even more enticing. Furthermore, since I can afford to trick out several alts, I'm taking advantage of the fact that I can wait for the weekends and then only play them while they have rested XP up. It makes the entire experience so much less painful than it was when I first started out. Quite frankly, levelling alts rock right now. Especially with the levelling curve and old world dungeon changes. I'm not entirely sold on the "solo-ification" of some of the Old World questing areas by removing elites. I know that all of those orcs that used to be elite still require a group to kill easily since they are crammed so close to eachother.

Some other day I will go into length about each of my alts, but for now all I can say is that alts should be best left to those with level 70 mains they cant trick out easily anymore. The only alt a new player should have is a bank alt.

BANK ALTS FOR NEWBIES

While you should never ignore a characters bank space, never underestimate the power of a bank alt. Just make a new character, and run them to a city with where a bank, auction house and mailbox are in close proximity. For alliance this means ironforge, unless your computer sucks in which case you might have to relocate. Horde has more options, and Ogrimmar seems to be the most popular one.

The key to the bank alt is that all they do is process mail your other characters send them. They sell the items you want to sell on the auction house, and they store items that you want quick access to when levelling a character that cant hack it in outlands yet. By sending all your goods across the mail, you save loads of time that would otherwise be spent running/riding/flying around on a levelling character between the bank and where they need to level.

Plus it also starts a centralized area of finances where you can visibly tell how much profit you've gotten from selling items off the AH. Your bank alt will need some seed money, but after that they will be more than capable of establishing a positive cash flow for you quickly and easily as long as you supply them with goods that will sell on the AH.

So seriously. Do it. It just takes a few minutes of boring running to get them set up, and then later on you can enjoy tricking them out with unique clothing ("real" characters have to unequip a lot of crap to see the awesomeness of festival gear). My bank-alt wears only brewfest regalia (hat, hosen and shoes!), a stein and an offhand fish. And it was totally worth getting too.