I mainly work it by - as people have vaguely touched on here and there - having a "main" character and the alts are, well, alts. The main is the one I focus the most attention on and default to when doing stuff, while the others just sort of idle about unless someone asks me for them or I'm in the mood for that particular character.
That said, I have a bit of an oddball situation where my "PvE main" is not my "RP main." Though, that could mostly come from the fact that Gogon and Chachan used to be on different servers (Zalera and Balmung, respectively), and helped set the pattern of how I do things in this setup.
First and foremost, I tend to login first with Gogon. Then I do whatever PvE stuff I want to knock out for the day - usually weeklies (basically just raids at this point - was VArk and Weeping, now it'll probably be Alex again) and my daily routines (Trial/Mentor/Expert roulettes, couple of beast tribe dailies if I'm feeling sassy). During the wait or before/after the queues, I check my retainers. Once I've knocked all that out, I logoff him.
Then I switch to my RP main in Chachan, and usually just idle around looking for RP or chatting over LSes. With the new patch, I might do a couple roulettes and stuff with him again just to "update" his gear set should it be needed, but usually when I'm on him I'm looking for/in the middle of RP.
That said, Gogon and Judge are still available for RP... I'm just not actively looking for it for them. It's usually a case of people asking to RP with them - or me being in the mood to RP them over Chachan for whatever reason - and then I switch over to them. Otherwise, I just focus mostly on Chachan. Relegating the other two to "on request" definitely helps me juggle running three characters - and I'd probably do the same if I ever decided to use any of my placeholder characters too, like the geneologist half-Hellsguard, half-Sea Wolf Unpronounceable Name.
That said, I have a bit of an oddball situation where my "PvE main" is not my "RP main." Though, that could mostly come from the fact that Gogon and Chachan used to be on different servers (Zalera and Balmung, respectively), and helped set the pattern of how I do things in this setup.
First and foremost, I tend to login first with Gogon. Then I do whatever PvE stuff I want to knock out for the day - usually weeklies (basically just raids at this point - was VArk and Weeping, now it'll probably be Alex again) and my daily routines (Trial/Mentor/Expert roulettes, couple of beast tribe dailies if I'm feeling sassy). During the wait or before/after the queues, I check my retainers. Once I've knocked all that out, I logoff him.
Then I switch to my RP main in Chachan, and usually just idle around looking for RP or chatting over LSes. With the new patch, I might do a couple roulettes and stuff with him again just to "update" his gear set should it be needed, but usually when I'm on him I'm looking for/in the middle of RP.
That said, Gogon and Judge are still available for RP... I'm just not actively looking for it for them. It's usually a case of people asking to RP with them - or me being in the mood to RP them over Chachan for whatever reason - and then I switch over to them. Otherwise, I just focus mostly on Chachan. Relegating the other two to "on request" definitely helps me juggle running three characters - and I'd probably do the same if I ever decided to use any of my placeholder characters too, like the geneologist half-Hellsguard, half-Sea Wolf Unpronounceable Name.
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