Alts. How many do you have and what do you do with them?

[Silverbane]

As a returning player who has been away over two years, left just after Shadowbringers dropped... I'm tempted to create an alt to re-experience the world "fresh".
What has me hesitant is the fact that most worlds are FULL and even the +EXP worlds are no longer accepting new players. So I'm stuck not being able to create an alt even if I wanted to because my preferred worlds are full and the +EXP worlds are also not accepting players.

My spouse and I each created new chars on Preferred World Midgardsormr in the past three days.
The trick this:

Whether a world allows new character creation is automatically re-determined every 3 minutes.

For me, I created my MIDG character around 2AM Friday morning, and had no trouble.

My spouse tried late Friday night and wasn't able to. But by patiently waiting at the final portion of Character Creation, where you choose your world, and refreshing the word status every three minutes, after about 15 minutes character creation was allowed again on MIDG, and so the character was successfully created.

[Hurlstone]

When I started playing the game back in 2014 I had a Miqo'te Summoner/Dragoon. I had several jobs at Level 50 by the time Heavensward came out, but shortly after that I stopped playing for a number of reasons. When a friend of mine convinced me to come back in the middle of 2020 I had forgotten alot about how to play and the ARR MSQ, so started a FemRo in the hopes of just getting my feet back on the ground. Thing is between those years my preferences of character has gone from ‘sweet cat girl’ to ‘STRONG MUSCLE WOMAN’ and so all this time later I have barley touched my old character. This is my main, and they are now an alt still standing in the Forgotten Knight waiting to see what the Vault is like. I have to say now Endwalker is out I do soon want to go back and complete the expansions on my old character, for nostalgia sake and to experience the story again in a fresh way... Its just a debate now on if I race change her haha. Perhaps go Bunny Boy?

Whilst I love the fact that we can do everything on one character, I am often an altaholic on other games and I wish FFXIV would give us more... incentives to having them. Even if its small things like shared achievements, or making all minion/mounts account wide.

[Rokke]

To avoid spending money on fantas mostly, but I rp too so it works out lol

I have 3 characters sitting at endgame (casually working on amaro #2 when Im subbed) and a handful scattered between post SHB/base EW.

[Tyssyn]

I have 3 alts, sort of? My main is actually my second character, because I had left during the end of ARR and came back mid-Stormblood and couldn't remember anything, so I started fresh. I still hop on my original character some. Then I made a lala just to goof off on. Some friends on another data center were doing a ceremony of bonding, so I made a character on their world and got her high enough she could get to the ceremony, and may play that one some with them although more likely to take my main over now with Data Center travel. I occasionally hop into character creation just to see if I can make a toon I like of races I don't tend to play but I end up deleting them.

[SturmChurro]

One alt that I don't play anymore, but I have bought several fantasias for. It's been so long since I've truly played it (not just doing a seasonal event), that I don't even remember my place in the story. I know it was before they did any updates to ARR. I don't really see the purpose in having it anymore. Not really sure why I haven't deleted it, to be honest. I don't ever see myself doing two characters in FFXIV, unless there was some purpose, and with being able to visit other datacenters in the same region, there is even less of a purpose in having it. Maybe have one in another region?

[Thaciscokidd]

2.

This Character that evolved from a Balmung scouting alt during the Gilgamesh/Balmung Wars and one to play with my brother-in-law on the JP side.

[Jojoya]

Whether a world allows new character creation is automatically re-determined every 3 minutes.

Is it actually every 3 minutes now? Last time I paid attention, it was updated every 20 minutes. Still a lot better than in the past when it was updated every 4 hours.

[rainichan]

...you don't want to know how many alts I have. I do have one of just about every race though, save for roes, mainly to see their animations and such, but I also roleplay. Before DC travel I had a few alts on other servers to play with friends elsewhere as well. I only have two that are max (or close to max level) because I can only stomach the ARR-SB story so many times on characters before I go crazy lol... no use spending a bunch of money on skips.

The only exception to this rule is an alt I made in memory of my late dad - he carried me through video games when I was a kid, so it's my turn to carry him this time and adventure with him. I play on that character when I'm missing him a lot, so it's a bit infrequent.

[Tlamila]

Uh in total quite some, as I still have a bunch of ARR leftovers on Balmung (some I deleted, some I couldn't bring myself to), some on Cactuar I made to help a friend (and also look too good to delete), one on Ravana I made for morning queues, but all those are low level and I don't really play them.
On Omega I have 6 alts, I'd have more but sadly there's a limit and I like to leave 1 slot empty. I just like making character of different races/looks, basically different persons. I could never fantasia to make a different character or something.
1 is at endgame, my lala, and one of the plans is to do Unreal with her as well and then trade mounts from her to main, but so far I've been too lazy for it. But now everything endgame I can technically do on both which is good. My viera is on her way there, currently in ShB. My highlander is still getting with roulettes to the msq point again (I skipped msq for all three in ShB so I gotta do the two last expansions regardless on each, plus I never skip classes so still level those). My roe is going through msq currently at the start of HW, which I do in pair with my partner's roe so it's a very slow progress so matter how much I like her. The other two are old charcters I don't like much anymore so I don't use much. One is my old main, a catgirl, she's at the end of SB and I was enjoying reliving it with her, but now I really cna't stand playing catgirls anymore so she's completely abandoned. My aura is at the end of ARR and I'll eventually get back to her but right now it's meh.

One of the things I loved doing on alts was seeing the story again, but at this point I'm kinda tired of it, so I just skip cutscenes and all. But progressing story even like that is a chill activity to do while doing somethign else to the side, mindlessly. Also joining roulettes on alts makes sense, while on main I'd join them for company but without really anything to gain out of them. And yeah, I like to play a different character depending on the day's mood, or what race I like the most that period of time. Them having different fashion sense/body shapes also helps with dresser limits, since on main I can only wear a certain clothing style cause space.

And honestly, on main the only things to do are farm stuff (relics, mounts, etc) and do weeklies, and I don't even raid. And more often than not I'm not in the mood to farm stuff, especially when alone. On alts, on the other hand, there's always so much to do.

[Alleo]

I have three alts on my server and I think another one on another DC which I never use.

I created them to help me sell stuff and to store items. One is a female elezen, another a male Viera and the other is bascially a copy of Haurchefant. (So I can pretend that he is quite fine, also seeing him in different glamours)

The elezen and Haurchefant clone are both low level. Yesterday I grinded him to level 30 so that I can do the summer event and get those nice clothes for him.

My male Viera is done with Lvl 50 which I have reached to get the free Fantasia. (So that I could change the alt to the Viera when it came out) I might do the MSQ with him from time to time if I feel like it. Its great to see how the game has changed in that regards.