Eternosus did a good job of explaining this, but I might be able to add a bit of perspective. This is one of those things that can be difficult to understand if you have not directly gone through it.
Take the case of the Tuskarr backpacks. They are cute. They are also cosmetic. Cosmetic items specifically are made because they know people would like things. That’s one of the reason they are frequently a reward.
In the case of the Iskaara, you need to be something like…Rank 17, for this. That is…not a quick process. This is something you have to spend a good amount of time on. It took me a few weeks. Your mileage may vary, but it took me a bit. I didn’t do that many dailies, but my alts were funneling the badges from Suffusion camps to me, and I would wait to use them for times when the Dreamsurge rep buff was up.
So, after weeks of time, you find out that you can buy backpacks. You see that they cost resilient leather, dragon isle supplies, and tallstrider sinew. You could have easily come across the leather, and everyone has supplies. But the sinew isn’t as common.
So you’re faced with the option of spending several hundred to a thousand gold on the option house. But you may as well farm them yourself. So, you look up where they drop, and you discover that to ‘make’ these backpacks, you require an item that drops from creatures that are not in Azure Span. Where the Iskaara are located.
Which seems silly, but that’s fine. You go to Ohn’ahran Plains, and get to farming. It’s not a rare or even uncommon, so it should be quick enough.
An hour later, you have one sinew. Not one backpack. One sinew.
So, after spending several weeks to unlock something, you find out that in order to buy it, you need to spend either several hours farming (this is not hyperbole) or several hundred gold for each of them.
I think people would be less frustrated if they just charged the gold upfront at the vendor. I certainly would. This feels like someone is trying to hustle me. This isn’t like Iridescent Plume, or Aquatic Maws, or Exceptional Pelt, or other things that you come across kind of naturally. This is something that drops from one type of one class of mobs.
And there’s no real indication that when you do get it, it’s something actually useful. You have to have prior knowledge of this. Woe be to those poor souls who just destroyed/vendored one to save space while leveling.
And, yes. Save space. Because it’s not a ‘reagent’, so it won’t fit in that bag. It takes up valuable space to perform a task that doesn’t just feel arbitrary, it feels punitive.
Is it the worst thing in the world? Of course not. But it is a glaring, grating irritant. If you don’t want to believe the people in this forum voicing strong opinions about this, go to Wowhead and check the comments for it.
This is uniquely irritating, and it almost feels targeted.
