1000th Post

I have been following the forums and responding to PMs here and there. I stopped leveling on Live at around 42ish.... I did take about two days to setup my PTR layouts and then spent quite a few more doing some extensive testing of Shamans, Mages and combinations. Playing AV with 10 is.... interesting. 10 Boxing WSG..... not so hot. 10 Boxing with shammys was also much more underwhelming than I thought it would have been. Arenas were interesting but the new life totals combined with Pally bubble heals and a few other issues made for interesting games but I don't expect to break 2100 with a 5 boxing team. Plus - epic speed flying mounts are a nightmare on a laggy server with 10 boxes. Losing somebody on the ground is easy. Losing somebody in mid flight.... due to lag. Sucks. A lot.

So those above factors and I got bored of the endless grinding. Kill 600 sets of mobs (sets of 4 - 5 or more, not 1) then do it all over again. For 25+ more levels.

It seemed like a waste of time really. I value my time at several hundred dollars per hour. Literally. I am able to pull a substantial amount of money per hour when you break it all down by either value of the company, total sale price or ongoing operating incomes. Which is good - the world values what I do and my unique talents.

I considered paying some farmers to level up my characters but I don't really want to devote the time it takes to play at the high end right now.

Lately I have been busy with selling one of my companies (still going strong 4+ years out!) and planning for the growth and expansion of a new one. I actually have 3 fully fleshed out business plans right now and self funding for all three. I just have to pick the one I most want to work on and buy all of the equipment and get it going.

WoW is fun and interesting. Sometimes I get really involved with it. Heck, I spent over $60k on my setup - not to mention the thousands of hours of work planning, designing and building. I love this stuff (although the $500+ power bills were a *bit* more than I had planned for) and I keep up with the community but honestly - I don't have the desire to play endlessly and get little to no reward for it. I would rather put my time and effort into something that will actually pay me back in a substantial way - rather than drain my resources and take up my time when I no longer currently enjoy it. I will most likely never make any money playing WoW. I knew that going into it. Don't get me wrong. I don't measure how "good" something is by how much I can make doing it. I played WoW for fun. I also build companies for fun. I am switching into company mode from WoW mode right now. Incentives are nice but really it comes down more that WoW is less fun for me right now than starting up something new.

I love helping you guys (and girls) and I love finding out how to set all of this stuff up. I very much appreciate the praise and thanks I have gotten from some of you. I do plan on continuing to follow WoW and I am sure one day I will come back to it. I still have active accounts and I will do what I can to support the Mag multibox community. There are quite a few of us now - very exciting to see!

But right now the last 2 - 3 weeks have been spent planning exactly how I want to setup my next company What all of the costs are (literally). Office space requirements, employee roles, all of the online work, marketing, projected growth, legal research, margins, etc etc etc. I like to invest in myself and I like to know what I invest in. To me, starting a company is as risk free as you can get. Because I know my own company better than any other. Sure, things can happen but I think a lot if not most companies fail completely because they are under capitalized or poorly planned (or executed). Who are your customers? How do you plan on reaching them? Is your product or service compelling? What is your burn rate? Are there ways to reduce it?

There is a HUGE difference between a company that innovates because they are asked to and one that has to innovate and bootstrap because they HAVE to. You would be amazed at how much you can accomplish with very little capital. You just have to be smart about it.

That said though - it is SO MUCH nicer being able to do things the correct way from the beginning. Think of it as running 5 accounts on 2 or 3 misc computers using only software solutions vs a huge 10 box array with independent computers and a full hardware only route. Both ways "work" but the latter is so much easier to setup, troubleshoot and run.

Anyway, this is turning into a rant. I have manufacturers to locate and projects to organize.