The alt thing

For a long time, I didn't get the alt thing. I could understand having more than one 70, but the idea of working on leveling more than one toon at a time just eluded me. I leveled my hunter to 70, and then, after I'd earned her a few pieces of PVP gear, explored Outland, done most of the quests to get her exalted with the five Horde factions, and maxed her mining and gotten close with her jewelcrafting, I returned to my shaman and leveled her up to 80 (basically, since Wrath came out just before I dinged 69).

And now that her herbalism is maxed, she's got gear just barely decent enough to heal heroics, and I've gotten bored with dailies, I should be leveling my hunter. And I am, a little here and there, veryvery slowly. And I am also leveling my mage and warlock and playing (but not really leveling) my death knight. I do want to sit down and focus on Ideale, and I really need to work on rep with Ahami, but I needed a break after the grind to 80, especially because I needed some time for the quests to freshen up, and having alt ADD has been a bit fun. It's getting old, though — I don't feel like I'm making any progress with any of my toons this way.

I will definitely focus on Ideale, but I kind of want to pick one other character to level to 80, to play when I'm just not feeling like spending another minute in Grizzly Hills or Strand of the Ancients. I only play my death knight with my priesty roommate, and that suits me fine; same with my survival hunter and my BFF. I want a healer in the 50-59 bracket, so the druid is out.

That leaves the mage or the warlock. The mage would be more logical — I'd be able to port people around for cash and so on, AOE farming would be kind of awesome, I could wait with Drek'thar until the Alliance attacked and then run around in circles spamming Arcane Explosion, etc.

But while I have not liked warlocks in the past, I am really taken with my current attempt, an undead 'lock. I tried the orc thing, then got a great character idea. Malisya's ... well, really crazy. As in not actually in touch with reality. And not really in a good way. I mean, she gets that the Forsaken have broken away from the Scourge and that they are supposedly working with the Horde, but she doesn't really care as long as she gets to kill stuff. And laugh about it. If I get her to Northrend, I don't know how she's going to do Wrathgate, because she'd totally just sit back and watch the whole thing, clapping gleefully, and not care who won.

I've always loved playing the chaotic evil types (even when I creep myself out with them sometimes), and I just keep coming back to play her, even though the DoT thing gets kind of frustrating sometimes. It's a really, really fun change from my other toons — Ideale is totally driven, but has a moral code and sticks to it even if it throws a wrench in her plans; Ahami is a healer first and foremost, who will kill when it is necessary without remorse, but really prefers to keep other people alive and let them do the killing; even Silang, who has no problem with doing what needs to be done even if it is technically evil (for example, the quest "A Special Surprise"), has regrets about it and prefers to act for the greater good when she can. Silang is my only red=dead character — the others mostly keep the PVP to the battlegrounds or defending Horde cities.

My original plan was to level both to 30 and then choose, but I'm getting back to my "I don't get the alt thing" mindset. I'd like to focus on one character at a time, and save the twink projects for breaks now and then. So while I level Ideale, I will be weighing warlock vs. mage.