World of Warcraft’s coolest new feature? The garrison building.

The new Garrison feature in World of Warcrafts Warlords of Draenor Expansion has, as before Mists of Pandarias Pokemon doesn’t have much to do with traditional MMO gameplay, which is probably why I find it so fascinating. That – and collecting people.

The garrisons were explained yesterday as part of the “What’s Next” panel at BlizzCon 2013 and are World of Warcrafts original answer to housing the player characters, essentially their own home. In the new old world of Draenor, players don’t get just any hut among dozens of similar huts, but they can choose a place in the new zones that they particularly like and build their own castle there.

You will start with something simple.

Just a few walls and a few buildings, barely enough to keep the wolves out. But over time, this modest accommodation can be expanded in two stages into a real fortress that you really don’t have to be ashamed of.

It’s like having your own little one World of Warcraft City to play in.

And the players will play. They can choose which buildings they add to their fortresses. The buildings you choose determine which advantages they receive and which missions the players’ followers can take on (more on this in a moment). A player who places a hospital on his land can gain access to rescue missions. If you build a mine, you may get your own ore vein that you can mine.

You can get further advantages/favors by gathering followers around you. These are NPCS that populate the player’s city. Each of these residents has their own personal skills and stats and a level between 90 and 100. Players can send these NPCs to complete precisely timed missions – reminiscent of a Facebook game. Once the timer runs out, you return with loot, experience points, and so on. Because these missions require no attention or input from the player once started, they act as a novel form of offline progression, giving players the opportunity to play the game even when they don’t have time.

Retainers are collectible items, each with its own rarity rating, reminiscent of the game’s item system. Green followers are slightly improved. Blue rare followers give the player powerful abilities. Purple followers bring big loot.

When not completing missions, Retainers are almost like Sims, virtual residents who populate the player’s garrisons/fortresses, completing a variety of tasks there and perhaps providing the player with whatever trading skills they have. You can even give them names as if they were pets.

That’s what Warlords of Draenor makes it interesting for me. Not raising the level cap. Not new loot or new old lands. Not improved character models. I just want to subjugate some virtual people to myself, call them all Dave, and force them to do what I tell them until they collapse from virtual exhaustion. That seems to me to be a reasonable wish. Blizzard is obviously of the same opinion.