The End of RAF (well, mine anyway)

Tonight is the last night I will have RAF. Actually, instead of spending all evening playing it out to it's fullest, I will first be using those "grant-a-level" bonuses to fill out my main account. When all is said and done, here's what I've gained out of Recruit a Friend.

For those curious, Account1 is the referring account and Account2/3/4/5 are all linked to it, rather than daisy chained to one another. The pro of how I have it is that I have level 60's for every class. The con of it is that one account is pretty stacked compared to the others.

One of those paladins on Account1 is my bank alt that I figured I'd just grant up to level 60 (rather than let the levels go to waste). After granting all the levels, I'll actually still have 45 levels worth of grants left, but with the 10 characters per server limit, there's not much I can do about that.

Now that it's essentially over (RAF that is), what did I learn?

• 5-man, level 1 on a new server = suck. BUT, it gets better with time. I can't afford dual specs, cold weather flying and epic flying mounts (yet), but I'm getting there. At my current level, I'm sitting on 2k gold just from selling stuff on the AH that I got in instances.

• Melee classes were not nearly as hard to box as I thought they would be. Ranged DPS is nice, but being up close and personal is cool too.

• While questing was a nice change, instance leveling is the way to go.

• Leveling a team to 60 and then using one of those characters to boost the other teams really made the levels fly. (duh)

• Spending time to set up class-specific macros on *all* accounts makes your play experience so much easier. I have a bunch of macro-cache.txt files (for each class) that made swapping between teams easier.

• Researching your class before you create it is also very beneficial. Having a level-by-level plan for what to spend you skill points on makes for less wasted time.

• Learned what your limits are and then push them. This is class/team dependent, but if you are taking on 1 mob without issue, then pull another (and another, and another, etc.). Playing it safe is fine, but if you really want to maximize yourself, PUSH.

• /click macros and an iWin button for every character simplifies things TREMENDOUSLY. Look back at one of my blog posts about my Ret pally macros. I wish I had spent time on this at the very beginning. I would have saved a lot of time.

• Logitech G11 + Razer Naga = ZOMGBBQFTW!

• Keep the addons simple and lite. Bartender4, Jamba, XPerl and Carbonite (I know, it's fat) really made playing, traveling and leveling much easier.

• Playing multiple classes and/or multiple races in the same team (from level 1) adds complexity. Between class quests and racial mount training, it gets annoying. I'm not saying it should prevent you from creating mixed teams, just go into it being aware you will add some traveling or quests that not everyone can do/needs.

• Achievements - Focusing on these will cost you time while leveling. Save this for after RAF or don't worry about it at all. Maybe pick one character/team that you care about it on and do it there.

• Professions - Tailoring is the only one that I really paid any attention to. You get so much cloth, you might as well level this up. At the very least, you can create bags for all your teams. And bags = GOLD. In fact, I got so much cloth at one point, I started selling it on the AH, which = MORE GOLD.

What's Next?

• SLOW DOWN - I've been pushing to get through RAF. I really haven't had time to stop and smell the roses.

• Get to 80 - Pick a team and get to 80 of course! I'll probably do my pallies first and then use one at 80 to then boost the others.

• Guides - Take some time and build out some guides for the multiboxing community. Macros, instances, etc.

• Addons - I'm a programmer by profession, so I'll probably get my feet wet with some addons.

• Professions - I'll probably have to level up some professions (engineering, alchemy, enchanting, etc.) Honestly, not looking forward to this, but it will help me and the guild down the line.

• Help out the up and coming multiboxers - Take all that cloth and start cranking out some bags for the new generation.

• PvP - Finally get off my arse and jump into some BGs. I'll probably go gank some alliance too. Payback's a bitch!

• Continue to give Azzie grief on her stream. One word: Rogues.