What Makes a Main?

For those who aren't fluent in Warcraft, every player is allowed 10 unique characters on any realm (server), and a total of 50 across your entire account. You can only play one at a time, of course. Of all of your characters there is probably one that is your "main", and the rest are "alts". Sometimes people will have more than one main. Sometimes people can't identify their main, they love all their alts. To make this a little clearer, I will attempt to lay out the guidelines that help you identify a "main".

First things first. When you first log in to the game, which character do you want to log in and spend time on first? Yes, you want to check your auctioneer mule, and there may be some reason why you need to see something on an alt, but most of the time you are logging in your main to check everything out and remind yourself of the things you want to get done with that character today.

Say hello. Even if there aren't any raids tonight and you don't feel like running your daily for a couple frost badges, you probably log into your main to say hey to other people and see who's online (because wow is just an interactive 3d chat client, amirite?). You may do this with ventrilo instead, but there it's even easier - the name you use on vent is often the name of your main. Your main is probably the identity you use on the forums also.

Levels. This is easy: We toy around with a lot of classes, but our main is usually our highest level character. If you only have one L80 character then it's probably your main. Given that we're over 5 years into this game, by now most experienced players have more than one L80.

Achievements. Somethings are fun to do once, but not twice. If an achievement comes up that you'd like to get done for a character, odds are there's a character you'd like to do it with in favor of your others - that one is probably your main. Your level 80 alts may be under 2000 achievement points, but your main will be over 4000, have the rare pets you found, have a bunch of titles, etc.

But... The things above are just indicators as to what your main might be. In actuality, your main is always the character you spend the most time playing. I have seven or eight level 80s (I forget atm) and two of them are highly competitive. But right now, my main is the priest I'm playing. I don't really care if my rogue progresses any further (even though it may become my main again in Cataclysm), but my priest is fun, and I'm playing it full-time. Therefore, it's my main, and I have several L80 alts.

That's it. Your main is the character you are mainly playing the most.