Opportunity cost in WoW

In MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, your main investment is time. People might complain about the $15 monthly cost, but provided you play more than 3 hours per month, at a US minumum wage of $5.15 the time you invest in WoW is a lot more valuable than the monetary cost. And you need to spend your time wisely, as with all investments. You might want to have one character of every possible class at level 60 in tier 3 epic armor, with an epic mount, and all factions to exalted, but you're not likely to get there anytime soon, and you have to prioritize.

Whatever goal you pursue has an "opportunity cost", of another goal you can't reach at the same time. For example after over 2000 hours played I still don't have an epic mount on any character. I'm sure if I really wanted I could make 10 to 20 gold per hour farming stuff, but that would mean 50 to 100 hours (2 to 3 weeks at my rate of play) of time spent not going after other goals, which interest me more. In 100 hours I could explore a new class by leveling a new character to 30 or so. I could go on about 20 raids, or 30+ instance dungeons. Or I could make some serious improvement to one faction reputation, not that I'm likely to, I don't like grinding faction.

So what are the goals that you decided to put on a backburner? The things you would like to do/have, but never find the time to, because other goals are more important?
- posted by Tobold @ 10:20 AM Permanent Link