Analyze, analyze, and to top it off some Analysis

Picture by: Júlio Reis

Everything you do can be regarded as a project. Some are big some are small, but from setting up a company to getting a burger at your favorite fast food restaurant can be seen as a project. For every project you need to know where you are and where you want to go, before you can look at how to get there.

If you go grab that burger you know that you are in the stage of hungry, and you want to go to the stage of satisfying that hunger with a burger. By the time you’ve settled upon a starting point and a goal, you can start thinking about how to travel the road.

To know where you are you need to analyze. Most analysis isn’t even conscious analysis, but analysis is nonetheless a integral part of decisions you make, and projects you undertake.

This is also true for improving your game play in World of Warcraft. To get an idea of where you can go, and how to get there you need to know where you are standing now.

During my education I have been stuffed with various methods of analyzing, but to me one has always remained the clearest and easiest to apply to most every situation. The SWOT analysis.

“SWOT Analysis is a strategic planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture. It involves specifying the objective of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieving that objective.”

- Wikipedia

Within the World of Warcraft there are various ways of defining the strengths and weaknesses, but any SWOT analysis must start with defining a goal or target.

Once again don't go tell yourself that you should be doing 9K sustainable dps on your rogue by tomorrow, I've yet to discover the rogue who can keep up those numbers (Thaddius...maaaaaybe), but make sure that you set yourself an attainable goal, because nothing is more frustrating than trying to achieve something that is virtually impossible.

Once you've defined the goal, you can start sticking things in the SWOT grid.

• Strengths: What are you good at, what are the strong points of your class, your group, your guild, etc
  
• Weaknesses: What are you not so good at, what are the weak points of your class, group, guild, etc
  
• Opportunities: What are options open to you to overcome your weaknesses? Is there perhaps better gear? Do you need to move better, different addon, etc
  
• Threats:Are you using a wrong addon? Is your screen cluttered? Are you comparing with the right class/people? etc
  

Every SWOT analysis will be different depending on the situation, the class, and the person playing that character. Take also into account your personal situation, are you frequently free to play several hours or do you have a partner/family who cannot stand the game? What about your concentration? Do you get tired of playing one character too soon?

Try it at home, it will give you insight about not only your game play, but also into your character, class, and social environment.