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!