Ding.

I lost a month of my life to World of Warcraft. ... It went okay.

It's been years since I was really into WoW, despite Blizzard's "best" efforts to get me back. And I would have gone on ignoring Warlords of Draenor if not for the incessant harping of some of my addict friends. Hey -- no judgments. But they are hapless dregs. No biggie.

I started by making a goblin, hoping to rediscover the joys of "early game" while also seeing some of Blizzard's more-recent narrative chops. That didn't go so hot. Goblin-town is the absurd endgame of the Theme Park design concept, such that not only is everything oriented around shiny baubles and guided-tour attractions, but that there is nothing else besides. There's no room for exploration or curiousity here, just following directions and clicking buttons. And the quality of those attractions isn't remarkable enough to make up for it. It's dull and unengaging.

Things took a turn when I used my free Level 90 Boost. Not an immediate turn -- awkwardly, the game assumes that everyone using the boost is a newcomer, or is otherwise unfamiliar with WoW's current feature set; so having just gone through the starting-area tutorial, the boost put me right into another, mostly-overlapping one. I was certain that my anemic spellbook was some kind of launch-window bug, until quests started unlocking my old spells again. I had to earn them all back. Dick move, Archmage Khadgar.

Anyway. As with all of Blizzard's expansions since Burning Crusade, this intro set the stage for story-driven progression throughout Draenor. And once I actually got on that stage, the leveling content was legitimately, pleasantly fun. My week-long trip from level 90 to 100 certainly wasn't the most enthralling game I've played, but for an MMO it felt pretty fresh: lush environments, tightly-scripted quests, cool solo boss encounters, and even a couple of the cutscenes weren't totally awful. This part of the game was solidly good.

Meanwhile, I started to get acclimated to features and mechanical changes that I'd missed over the past 5+ years. Mostly stuff I didn't care about -- more currencies to collect, more factions to grind reputation for, more daily quests to churn through, more achievements to compulsively check off. I appreciated the change to explicitly note "item level" on all equipment - simplifying the process of upgrading gear - and I liked how the talent system trimmed the fat from the formerly-bloated talent trees. As for dungeons... well, as convenient as the looking-for-group system has become, I just can't enjoy the traditional game of follow-the-tank anymore.

And I was effectively stuck on that punchline for the rest of the month. Once I reached max level, and once I finished Draenor's "story" quests, I wasn't that interested in anything else the game had to offer. I might have gotten more enthused about my engineering profession, but there isn't much new about it -- on top of which, Draenor-level professions are frustratingly time-gated by a whole bunch of one-per-day recipes.

That didn't stop me from playing, though: what kept me engaged was the garrison. It's an utterly transparent feature; this is a Facebook game, in World of Warcraft. I could practically taste the Canadian Devil's presence in it. (Which is why it's so baffling that there isn't a WoW Garrison mobile app!) But somehow this formula really worked for me. Sending my recruits out on missions, leveling them up and getting meaningless rewards, watching them grow in strength and ambition; all weirdly satisfying. And while I slept my way through old dungeons, or button-mashed my way through new ones, the completely-passive garrison was the thing that kept me coming back.

Like an addict, I had to work against myself to really bring a stop to it. If I didn't explicitly cancel my subscription, I'd still be making regular logins today, checking in on my followers and gathering up their garbage quest rewards. ... And if Blizzard does deign to make a garrison companion app, I'll probably fall right back off the wagon for it.

So much of the game isn't fun, though. Tepid, at best. Blizzard has been perfecting the art of mindless grind-play since World of Warcraft's early days, and it's so intense and pervasive now that even a total outsider can see it. As unfair as it would be to disregard the good in World of Warcraft, the story-driven leveling campaign and the lovingly-crafted world itself, it would be naive to ignore the thick, regimented tedium surrounding it.

Warlords of Draenor shows off exactly how good of a virtual pusher Blizzard has become. The fun stuff is "free," in the sense that leveling content feels more than worth the time and money. But then there are so many more days left in the subscription, and there's so much more content to try, so many more things to do. And that first high will never return, no matter how much the game continues to string itself along.

Better than: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
Not as good as: nostalgia; having free time again
And, I'm still sore about: having to pay for a subscription on top of the expansion. $50 isn't enough? You really need another $15 from me to actually play the game I just bought? Come on, Blizzard. I'm sure you're good for it.

Progress: Level 100, World Explorer