One of you has got to go

The aptly titled blog WoW or sleep - one of them has to go features the writings of a player with six, count em, six level 60 characters! Not only that, if you scroll down further you'll see she also has four characters over 40 (all with mounts) and five more over 15.

Several months ago, I decided that I should delete some of my lower-leveled characters that were crying out for attention. It was an attempt to consolidate my time in WoW. Perhaps with less characters I wouldn't spend so much time in-game (you see how that worked out - it didn't.)

I had alts I created when my main realm was down. Ha-ha instead of just logging off and doing something else when the server was unavailable I would create a new character! How's that for addicted?

I also had alts I created to make up for what I felt my other characters lacked. My current main character - a priest was made because my first character only hack-n-slashed. I wanted a priest so that I could heal. And boy would I! But I won't go off on a healing rant tangent right now...

I made a warlock because I heard they "pwn". I made a rogue to twink. I made a mage because I heard they farm well. I made a druid solely for roleplaying.

What I really wanted was one character that could do it all. But the only "pwn" my healing spec priest would see was "getting pwnd". Also try farming with a spec made for you to stand back and let others do all the work - let me just say, it sucks.

So I had all these alts that together would make my WoW experience "whole". My plan was to heal on my priest, wreak havoc in pvp on my rogue, farm gold on my mage and enjoy easy mode on my warlock.

But I forgot about that leveling thing. The quickest I've ever leveled a character to 60 was 4 months. I can't realistically do another that fast (fast for me) and with each one I level - contrary to the blog I referenced above - the fun factor dies out. And unlike Guild Wars you don't have the option of starting a character at max level.

So my plans for having it all died quickly, and I was left with a cast of characters from level 5 to 35 just languishing about.

Instead of neglecting them, I deleted many of them. I no longer have any characters on any other servers. I transferred the one high-level one to my priest's server. So now they all reside in one place. The next time my server is down - I'm just going to go outside.

I deleted all the characters that didn't make it past level 15 - the only one that was saved from the chopping block for that reason was the druid, because I don't have to level her in order to roleplay with her.

I kept the twink because of all the extra effort I put in to her and I may decide to level her up one day - I hear rogues are easy to level. I'm holding on to the mage for the same reason, although I plan to transfer all of her stuff to a draenei once The Burning Crusade is released. Then off with her head!

Will I ever delete my 60s (70s)? I've seen videos of players disenchanting (destroying) all their epics and deleting their character before quitting WoW for good. But what if in 10 years, for nostalgia's sake I want to boot up WoW and jump on my priest and relive her times in Azeroth? I heard Everquest recently released some of their original classic servers. So just in case, I'm holding on to a few of my characters. I'm sure my priest is rubbing her neck with a sigh of relief...