Only when context is ignored: Take the word "terrible:"
Good reasons for making an alt: I discovered I liked something better ("this playstyle fits me better"); I want to make something that will be situationally better sometimes ("I have more fun in PvP" and "My raid needs X").
Bad reason: I have no choice ("I want to see how this top-tier talent works"); I think my choice is wrong ("everyone is playing, so I might as well too"); the game isn't appealing to me anymore ("I'm bored.")
In this paragraph Matt unambiguously provides context to the entire article. FROM A GAME DESIGNER'S PERSPECTIVE there are good reasons for your players making a lot of alts, and bad ones. The good ones are: the players genuinely enjoy the variety. The bad ones are: the players feel compelled to do so because the game limits them in some way that forces the creation of alts.
Not remotely coincidentally, these arguments are exactly the same arguments the players themselves constantly presented to the devs as the basis for making game design decisions. If this article was written by a player, asking the devs to focus on the "good" reasons why he made alts and not on the "bad" reasons why he made alts, I don't think anyone would have been parsing his words and accusing him of secretly hating alts altogether. They wouldn't be saying that anyone who uses those words must be hiding a dislike for alts that is leaking through to his semantic choices.
The article ends on this note:
You don't need a ouija board to guess at the implications of some of the single words Matt uses, when his whole sentences convey the idea unambiguously.
Before Incarnates came out, alts
were the game. At least for me.
For everyone else, even if you only ran one character at a time, once you hit 50 you started another.
If you played for years, you ran through a fair number of alts.
Personally, I loved to come up with new character ideas, and match costumes, backgrounds and powersets to them. I didn't actually run all of them, but most.
And when a new powerset came along that I liked, I had to make a new character to try it out.
I also found out that characters I fleshed out and ran casually, I tended to go back to again and again. The few I ran in a min/max mode (running with the same few people and consistently aimed for max xp in minimum time) I never touched again once they hit 50th.
They never really grew in my imagination as real characters.
Sadly, this ends my reign as Lord Minion.
The Powers That Be (jealous of my fame, no doubt), have conspired to strip me of my exalted title, and reduce me to the rank of mere Lieutenant.
In the future, I will settle for my other title.
