A few nights ago, our alt army was waiting at the appointed quest area for the last arrival, one of the Alt Warriors.

We’ve been more than patient with Alt Warrior, but he pulls this crap almost every night: check the Auction House 43 times for any level 30-ish uber, check a few more times for level 40-ish uber (to prepare for next week), then beg the guild enchanter to log on and enchant his new shit.

He’s got to be almost out of gold on his main; he completely changes over his warrior gear that often. While gold is much easier to come by at level 60, our alts aren’t producing much revenue — they aren’t even self-sufficient yet — and the mains are too busy babysitting to get out in the field and produce.

He finally arrives in Stranglethorn Vale, takes one look at the designated rogue babysitter, and balks. He wants the 60 hunter to cover quests until the alts have mounts because of the group run buff.

(As if he’ll be able to afford a mount for that spoiled brat of a warrior.)

Now the hunter balks, since he just pushed us all through the last ten levels, he’s sick of it. He wants to do the /fol and afk while chatting on TeamSpeak like the rest of us.

Can’t blame him for that … several days of repeatedly asking, “Does everyone have the griff route this time? Check before we leave. Did everyone check? All got?” would drive anyone to the bottom of a bottle.

Anyways, we leave quest camp, dutifully /following the rogue, and start banging out the initial quests. The buffs drop from time to time; takes several minutes for the priests to refresh because we’re not really paying attention. The rogue is shredding up the whole zone, reminding us to loot this quest piece or that one.

We don’t even bother buffing the rogue because buffs are kind of a luxury for our mains — they’re used to winning ugly. He complained once about the lack of buffs — was the least we could do, he said — so we spammed Fortitude until we were drained of mana.

Sometimes we help the rogue kill, mostly we don’t.

We complete a handful of quests, our escort runs us back to the NPCs for turnins and the resultant dings. Gather a fresh set of quests, head back out … no run buff, no mounts. God, it’s brutal!

Eventually, the rogue gets bored. Not to stereotype, but short attention span seems to be a class-defining trait. And I should know.

He’s mowing through this troll camp with lots of roamers and tight statics and accuses us of not even knowing how to play the alt classes yet. (Like he had room to talk — his alt hadn’t even taken one swing all night, just followed around and occasionally got stuck on trees.)

We point out that it will take all of about five minutes, some day in the future, to get our game on, so shaddup and kill.

He says, ok … pulls the elite troll, jabs at him a few times, then vanishes. And just like that, some day was upon us.

For having a elite situation forced upon us, we didn’t do too badly. For being experienced gamers driving around level 30s, we stunk up the place. Fortunately, the rogue stepped back in before the troll started dropping our healers and made short work of him. Of her. Of it. Who can tell with trolls nowadays?

Down to Booty Bay to empty the mailboxes of our gifted riches: stat food, potions, equipment of appropriate level (as opposed to the shit our mains had to wear while leveling up), trinkets and other virtual bling bling, and, of course, the weekly alt allowance. Kings don’t live this well.

Preparing to log for the night in the local Booty Bay tavern, we finalize plans for the next play session, to begin back up north, near the top of Stranglethorn Vale.

Alt Warrior asks, “So, the hunter will come get us to run us back north, right? Y’know, no mount yet.”

It’s probably time to wean the youngsters and cut them loose. After they all have their own rides, of course.