Milking My Cash Cow

So I just realized that this is my 300th blog post.  Odd that it is going to be somewhat business focused rather than my normal altoholic / leveling stuff.  But oh well!

So I posted a comment on a post by one of my favorite bloggers, Alternative Chat who was kind enough to follow it up with a very thoughtful analysis of my comment.  She's copied the text of my original comment at the top of this post (although the comment itself was on an earlier blog post.

So a number of the high powered consulting firms have developed quadrant approaches for looking at your business strategy.  Each firm's iterations are a little different, but they basically involve segmenting your businesses into pieces and putting them into different quadrants.  A basic version of this matrix looks like this:

So you take the elements of your business and divide them up based on different critera (not all versions use growth rate and market share on the various axes).  What I've tried to point out, is that if you look at Activision / Blizzard from the perspective of a business, and not as a game, I'm sure they've done an analysis like this as part of their regular strategy process.  If you look at their results as disclosed in their SEC filings for the last few years, I feel it is highly likely that World of Warcraft falls squarely into the cash cow quadrant (probably along with things like Call of Duty, Diablo and maybe Skylanders heading that direction).

Now what does that mean if a business unit is a cash cow.

First of all, you're looking to maximize the profitability and cash flow generation of that unit.  You are looking for opportunities to continuously improve and streamline and make things more efficient.  Again, keep in mind, I'm talking about Warcraft as a business, not as a game.  I want to invest just enough capital to keep my customer base happy and to innovate where needed and the constant improvements often mean some additional capital needed for those efficiency projects as well.  You may be looking at opportunities to consolidate or outsource certain operations in order to cut costs.  Every investment will be looked at with a very careful eye towards the returns that will be generated by those investments.

But I'm not investing my growth capital here, and it's probably not where most of my management attention is going.  Most of the management attention is probably being spent on the fixer uppers,which are generally the upper right quadrant above, and definitely the
Stars - the areas where I'm looking to invest the most capital, because that's where I'm driving the most growth.

It's my assertion that many of the steps that you see Blizzard taking are the result of their attempts to make the business of Warcraft more efficient and improve cash generation for them, trying to produce new content more cost effectively, keep a broad group of customers satisfied to maintain revenue generation and protect their market share.

Level 100 #7 and a Second Character Finishes the Legendary Chain

I managed to hit level 100 on my paladin on Monday.  His total leveling time was the second fastest of the toons so far, after only the Death Knight.

Next up is the shadow priest, who I'm kitting out in a full set of upgraded heirlooms just to see what kind of difference that makes in the time.

I also managed to finish the legendary quest chain (available so far) on my second character - my hunter.  My Death Knight is currently sitting at 115/300 toward his third tablet, so it'll likely be next week before he is fully done.  Then it'll just be focusing on leveling until the next tier hits.

I may go back and do a few circuits on the various alliance toons that are currently sitting in the mid-60's, just for a bit of fun.

I also finished the achievement necessary to upgrade my inns to level 3 on all of my Garrisons, which gives all my characters access to the lucrative treasure hunter missions.

My standard garrison build now basically includes a Salvage Yard, an Enchanters hut, whatever profession building is relevant for that particular toon, a War Mill, an Inn and then whatever else strikes my fancy at that particular point in time.  Usually a Barracks.  I feel like I have enough Barns going at this point.  I'll add the Lumber Mill here and there, although most of my remaining toons have now been waiting so long to be leveled, that they've all accumulated a giant horde of Garrison Resources.

So that's it for this week.

Cheers.

Initial Thoughts on Patch 6.2

So patch notes are up for Patch 6.2 and as a crazed altoholic, I had a few general thoughts.

• While a Shipyard sounds conceptually interesting, I'm not really looking for more regular garrison chores thank you very much.
• We've combined all the things you hated about Hellfire Peninsula with all of the things you absolutely despised about the Timeless Isle in a fabulous new zone, Tanaan Jungle, all beautifully planned to drive you to start playing Overwatch instead when it releases.
• For those of you who hated the intro sequence to Tanaan Jungle to the point of actually going back to the damn Timeless Isle to try to get out of it, we've added a whole new Tanaan Jungle series of quests that you're sure to hate just as much!
• Our developers and artists have been hard at work designing a brand new, not new at all raid instance that is a place you've already been before a thousand times!  Welcome to Hellfire Citadel.  As an added bonus, you'll still have no clue how to run back to the instance when you wipe, just like the BC version!
• In order to enhance our development productivity, parts of the new raid instance will just port you directly to old raid and dungeon instances where many of the "new" bosses already are.
• Some classes have been buffed, some classes have been nerfed.  In general, the world is not coming to an end.  
• While no details are yet available on the last portion of the legendary questline, please rest assured it will be grindy as shit.

So all cynicism and sarcasm aside, I'm always up for new content and trying something new, so I'll reserve judgment until I get the chance to run a few characters through.

As an update on other developments, I finally finished both the currently available legendary questline and the garrison campaign series on my warlock, Joar.  I'm currently working on my third elemental tablet on my hunter, who is about 22 runes in towards his 3rd, and am close to finishing up the 2nd tablet on my death knight, who is sitting at 264/300 runes on his second tablet.

I also finished up the quests necessary for upgrading the lumber mill and am currently working through the inn quests so I can upgrade that.  Because what else am I going to do?

My paladin is getting close to done - he's working his way through Nagrand and just a few bars from 99.  The shadow priest will be up next.  I'll be using fully upgraded heirlooms on the priest, just to see what difference that makes to leveling times.

Closing In On Elemental Tablets

So I made good progress on Elemental Runes and Tablets across all three of my characters currently participating in that nonsense last week and there's a pretty good likelihood I'll finish up, at least on Joar this week.

So Joar is sitting at 193/300 on his third Elemental Tablet, so a very good possibility he'll finish this week.

The other two characters, my Death Knight and my Hunter are both working on their second tablets.  The hunter is sitting at 156/300 on his second, and the death knight is sitting at 79/300, so they've both got a ways still to go.

I've also made decent progress this week on leveling my paladin, and he's sitting at level 97 and working his way through the Spires of Arak.

My shadow priest will be up next and I plan to have him venture forth with a fully upgraded set of heirlooms, just to see what difference that makes in leveling time.

So far, there's been a larger amount of deviation in my times than in previous expansion, which is probably a testament to how much there is in this one to distract you and result in unnecessary dicking around (that being the technical term for it).

So that's it for the update for this week!

Cheers!

Kind of Bored And Waiting for the Next Expansion? Already? Really?

So we're not even 6 months in to this, and I'm already kind of done with Warlords.  Not that I'm going to stop playing.  After all, I've got something like 10 more toons that I need to get to level cap to be ready for the next expansion, and as a severe altoholic, I do enjoy the leveling.

Even in Warlords, that process is something that I'm still enjoying.

But the rest of it, I'm kind of done with.  Unless they've got some interesting new content coming in 6.2, I have sort of lost interest in the rest of it.  Garrison's were a neat idea and something that I was pretty excited about going in, but now it feels a little bit like the list my wife leaves on the fridge for me every weekend.

I could really go for a couple of interesting faction daily quest hubs.  Something with some interesting rewards at the end.

The legendary chain has been interesting, but I think I decided to do it on more toons than I should have this time around.  Three was just way to much, and it's not leaving me enough time for leveling.

Right now, I've got two elemental tablets put together on my warlock, one fully put together on my hunter, and I'm pretty close to having my first put together on my death knight.

So my plan is to finish this phase with these three and when the next phase rolls around, decide if I want to move forward on anyone other than the warlock.

In the meantime, I've been making a little bit of leveling progress on the paladin and he's sitting at level 94 getting ready to head for Talador.

Shadow Priest will be up next.

Recharged and Refreshed

So my day job can be pretty stressful and always has been.  It's one of the reason's that I enjoy escaping to Azeroth every now and then.  It's always sort of gone with the territory that even when I've been away on vacation, there will be several work related calls that I have to take, and a certain portion of the day and evening will be spend reviewing things, or responding to things, or approving things, or what have you.

Typically, some of that time in the evening after I finished my work stuff would also be spent on World of Warcraft - doing dailies (now garrison chores), running LFR, doing heroics for valor - really the same types of to do lists that go with my work.

So it was with much personal surprise this past week when I did none of that.  Nothing.  No e-mails.  No calls.  No WoW.  I sat on a beach, with a drink in one hand and a book in the other.  I stuck my toes in the sand,  I played with my kids in the ocean.   I went for early morning walks on the beach with Mrs. Joar, or I just sat and had coffee and watched the ocean in the morning.

In the evenings, I read a book - a total of three actually over the course of the entire week.  In short, I relaxed.  Utterly.  It was glorious.

So now I'm back at work, refreshed and recharged, and ready to dive back into Azeroth as well.

So cheers!

Is This Really How I Want To Be Spending My Time?

So I've got a total of three characters that I'm currently running through the legendary quest line that are all currently engaged in accumulating Elemental Runes.  As I pointed out last week, I expect that it's going to take me somewhere from 7-9 weeks to finish that portion of the quest line across all three of these toons, and I'm really questioning whether I want to even bother.

My schedule with work and real life now has made it extremely difficult for me to find the time to knock out full LFR clears across three different toons each week, so I may decide to just abandon it and focus on getting it done on my warlock.

The paladin finished up Frostfire and is now working through Gorgrond.

Both the shaman and the druid are hanging out in their garrisons gearing up and making money via garrison missions, which as an altoholic, works quite well for me.

It lets me keep gearing them in a way that they'll be ready for the next expansion, or able to hop into an LFR if I feel like it, with minimal investment of time.

Oh, and I finally got the Selfie camera on Joar.  I was a little disappointed to realize that it doesn't actually take a screenshot for you when you use it.  How hard would that have been?

This week will be more Elemental Rune grinding, more follower missions and leveling the paladin.

Next week I'll be out of town on vacation, so probably won't be playing at all.

Ding, Level 100 #6, and Grinding Through Runes

So for those of you that get annoyed by the Ding titles on my blog posts as I hit max level on various toons, I apologize.  For me, it gives me an easy ability to quickly track my progress from expansion to expansion, with my blog history being an easy display of who hit what level when.

Now that I've written that down, I could probably just add those data points to my existing spreadsheet and spare you all the pain.  Amazing how that works some times.  This is what that particular exercise looks like character by character.

So as you can see on here, I finished my alliance hunter earlier this week finally.  The time on him was a bit disappointing frankly, but this particular character was one that I was leveling using a method that I'll fondly refer to as "screwing around with a friend".  While it's lots of fun, it's not the most efficient leveling process. Next up is the Horde paladin, who is getting close to being done with Frostfire. I've also continued to work three characters through the legendary quest chain - my warlock, death knight and hunter.  If my calculation on elemental rune drop rates are correct, it looks like it is going to take me between 7-8 weeks on each to finish amassing Elemental Runes.  No, that's not a grindy pain in the ass.  Why would you say that? My warlock had a bit of a head start, and is also further along on Garrison followers, giving him a few extra here and there, so he may end up a bit faster than that, but it wouldn't make the difference of more than a week I think.  My shaman is also now geared enough to start running LFR courtesy of the Joar empire crafting guild, but not sure I'm actually going to be doing that anytime in, oh, the next 7-8 weeks. Cheers.

Ding, Level 100 #5

I managed to hit 100 finally this week on my shaman.  As I mentioned before, the leveling time on this one probably isn't a good indication because I spent quite a bit of time on this guy early on in the expansion doing the glyph thing, so he was probably quite a few hours in by the time I started leveling.

With that though, his total time was 33 hours and 44 minutes.  Feels like that was probably pretty slow, even with the glyph time at the beginning.

Paladin is up next, and I'm going to go back to chugging xp potions on this guy.

Approaching the Finish Line on the Shaman

So my shaman in sitting just a few bars short of 99.  I had plans of switching him to enhancement for the last half of his journey to 100, but after not being able to find a single agility weapon from late in the Talador zone until mid way through Nagrand, I've pretty much given up on that.

I think I've decided to have my paladin be the next character through, just so I can work on getting jewelcrafting maxed.  That will leave engineering as the last profession, because that one is always last for me.

I need to grab 6 more Abrogator Stones for my hunter at some point today, and then all three of my characters working their way through the legendary quest line will be at the same point so they can also start working on the new wing of Blackrock Foundry LFR.

That's about it for now.  As soon as my shaman and alliance hunter are done, I should be able to report some data on leveling time for both of them, but not expecting anything too different from what I've seen on other characters.

A brief update for this week, but that's it for now.

Progressing the Shaman

So I'm continuing to make good progress on leveling my shaman.  He's currently sitting at level 95 and working his way through Talador.  I don't really have much interest in raiding on this character at this point, so I'm likely going to just get him to 100 and then park him back in his Garrison and Orgrimmar to keep working on his professions.

I will likely finish the Highmaul Abrogrator stones portion of the legendary quest line on my death knight this week and am continuing to make good progress on the hunter.  I think I've decided that I'm going to limit it to those three characters at this point.  I may add one more at some point, but I'm definitely not looking to work through the quest chain on a toon of every class, which is something I'd originally considered.  While I will almost definitely level more to 100 than that, I think I'm pretty happy with the group working on the legendary quest line.

I'm still debating which toon is going to be next.  I'm leaning towards having it be a melee class, so that I can alternate between casters and melee.  Right now my monk has been parked in his garrison accumulating resources, but I may move the paladin into that position as well.

I'm not using xp potions on the Shaman because I didn't find it to be all that helpful on the druid.  That, and since the Shaman spent a decent amount of time early in the xpac continuing to work the glyph market, I really won't have good leveling speed data on him anyway.

The process of getting all of my professions leveled continues to be really slow.  I'm just taking the points as I need to craft various gear for alts, not really pushing to get anything done.  At some point I'll decide I just need to be there, but at this point, I've only got 3 or 4 that I've maxed at this point.

I'm looking forward to patch 6.1, especially the heirlooms tab.  Not much else in the patch that I'm all that jazzed about at this point, but I guess we'll see once it finally drops.  LFR for Blackrock Foundry also starts in a couple of weeks and I should be in relatively good shape to have all 4 of my current max level characters in a good spot to run that once it's open.