Warlords of Draenor feels ephemeral

When is the last time you changed the music on your garrison juke box?

When is the last time you actively sought out music rolls for your garrison?

When is the last time you collected the ore from your mine?  Flowers from your garden?

After your bodyguards hit max reputation, do you use them anymore?

Have you got to max rep on all of your bodyguards?

Did you get the selfie achievement?

After getting the achivement, how many people use their selfie cameras?


How popular is the twitter functionality?

What do we do with those toys that are only of use in Draenor?

What about those toys that somehow aren't really toys?

During the Wrath Timewalking weekend I ended up in the Halls of Lightning for one of my runs. After we beat Loken, I had the music roll drop from him.  It surprised me because I had completely forgotten about the jukebox in my garrison and about collecting the rolls for it.  I had meant to go back to get a lot of them later but just never got around to it.  (That was about the time that the no-flight thing was in full swing and it really curbed my enthausim for playing.)

It struck me as odd how quickly I had forgotten about this part of the game.  Then I remembered how others have said that the developers have said (2nd hand knowledge warning) that the garrisons are just for this expansion.  We won't be getting a new garrison in the next expansion and our followers won't be joining us.  It really underlined how self-contained this expansion is.

Think about Draenor as just leveling content, with no intent to do "end game". Any character that comes to Draenor after the next expansion is out probably won't have a level 3 garrison because why would they?  They'll level through the area fast enough to not need it and the benefits from it may not be enough to justify the time and resource sink that it is. If they don't have a level 3 garrison, they won't get a shipyard (okay, so there is an upside) and they wont' be going to Tanaan.  Even if they get to Tanaan, and assuming they didn't have a higher level character earn the Pathfinder achievement already, are they really going to take the weeks to get the rep to honored so that they can get the achievement? So new players are likely to never fly in Draenor.


Is this something unique to Warlords of Draenor? Is this really different than past expansions?  Am I being fair?  I guess something just feels different this time.  There are so many time sinks that when we come back to this content as pass through, it's going to feel very pointless to do a lot of these things.


I'm not sure of those answers but here are some other features that have stayed relevant past their addition to the game. These are not core gaming components, but they are significant enough to have developer time in patches and expansions after their introduction.

(I thought about adding flying to this but 1) I consider it a core part of the game and 2) I think others do too, and now Blizzard knows that.  I'm not sure if they'll try to remove flying again from the game, but I doubt it would be anytime soon if so.)

Pet battles

Only "recently" introduced, pet battling has become an identifiable main stay of the game. They've really only been here since Mists of Pandaria, granted that was around 3 years ago that they were introduced, but it did such a good job of taking something that had been around since Vanilla, revamping it and giving it a life of its own.  Some people hate it, yes, but the same could be said of PvP or raiding or crafting. The key thing is, it is popular enough that it draws people and isn't going away anytime soon.

Heirloom items

I had forgotten that heirlooms were introduced in Wrath of the Lich King.  There have been numerous changes to them, and with the latest heirloom tab it is even easier to use them. But they've been through 3 expansions and I doubt they'll remove them anytime soon.

Transmogrification

A Cataclysm update that had been requested in video games since the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt. Rough estimate.  Not only are they now creating gear that is solely for transmog purposes, but if it were to be removed, I'm pretty sure the transmog community might put the flying community to shame.  Their numbers are probably smaller than the pro-flying crowd, but though they be but little, they are fierce!

I have no doubts that there are other things we could point to and argue about as additions or content and I welcome any additionally thoughts.  The bigger thing for me is that the stuff I associate with this expansion, is stuff that is going to stay with this expansion, good or bad.

As to my questions from above: 

As I mentioned, I forgot about my jukebox.  After I get Pathfinder done (almost there, a few more days, when I can find the time) I may go back on do that, although to be honest, looking for those rolls feels like a nothing-to-do thing for me.

I generally still harvest my flowers for a few reasons: as a tailor, some of the flowers are needed for my daily cool down. My spouse has an alchemist so I send along the others I don’t use. And I typically get the food buff fruit for when we play, so while I’m over there I grab the flowers. Also, my druid has a storehouse, so I can easily and quickly drop the flowers in my bank. But other than that, no, I don't do it often. The mine I do even less.

I only have one bodyguard up to max rep, so I have a ways to go on that front before this is an issue. But I do know that I doubt I'll be getting wingman on more than my main and one alt.

I think I've taken 4-5 photos with the selfie camera.  I might do more.  I'm not inherently against it, it just doesn't really appeal to most of my characters, so I don't do it. But it isn't a draw for me.

Never used twitter, doubt I will. If I do, it will never be in game.

I hate that so many toys from Draenor are specific to this world and doubly hate the ones that take up space and for all intents and purposes seem like they should be toys but somehow aren't.