World of Warcraft: An Experiment Begins

It is no secret that managing Garrisons can get a tad boring, especially if you're like me and manage multiple as a result of crippling altoholism. While the rewards are great, the type of engagement expected on a daily basis makes for a poor experience that results in players getting burned out or fatigued and unable to do much more beyond logging in to manage. This is something I intend to criticize in the near future, along with a number of other aspects of World of Warcraft in the wake of the Q1 sub drop and the reactions to it (there's way too many to link).

Prior to this unsettling announcement, I devised a simple plan to try to spice up my Garrison management, which I set up for by depositing all of my gold on every active character into the guild bank. The plan was to determine how much gold I could make in 30 days (or about a month), mostly to find out how many WoW Tokens I could buy every month. The experiment would entail the following:

• No depositing money into the Guild Bank (this is something I do habitually to protect my wealth a little better).
• I can withdraw money from the Guild Bank to cover purchases such as Garrison upgrades, Heirlooms, and WoW Tokens but cannot withdraw gold to inflate the amount of money I make (in other words, I must withdraw exact amounts of gold).
• Also, I'm using Guild Bank funds to repair gear.
• This should also mean I don't sell anything from the Guild Bank unless for some reason I run out of stuff to sell (this should not happen).
• I will screenshot Altoholic showing how much money I have on my characters either at the end of the day or the beginning of the next day before doing anything that might make money. Also, I cannot send money between characters.
• Since one of my active characters is on the other merged realm, I'm mailing gold from that character to my Warrior on the realm shown in the Altoholic window. This serves as an exception to the rule.
• While anything technically goes in terms of money making, it's ideal to try to make money as "naturally" as possible. This means that most of the money I make it from activities I would normally find myself doing (Garrison management, dailies, selling items on the Auction House, etc).
• The amount of times I can perform said activities may be changed due to external circumstances (including this experiment).
• I will provide regular updates through tweets (at the moment it'll be weekly, not including the tweet with this article), with a final tally at the end of the experiment.
• There will be an Imgur album available that'll be updated more regularly.

So far, it's working pretty well and I find myself logging on multiple times to check up on my missions when previously I did it on a daily basis. I also find myself participating a little more in activities such as dailies and plan to do some LFR soon as well.

If anyone else is interested in doing this experiment or a similar one, feel free to join in (it's not like I can stop you after all).