Vanity lasts forever

I log on my level 80 characters in World of Warcraft every day, but most of the time only to do things like the daily jewelcrafting quest, or alchemy transmutes with 23 hours cooldown. The rest of the time is spent between working on my inscription business, and playing alts, with my paladin being level 36 now, and my druid level 29. The gear my level 80s are wearing hasn't changed for quite a while. I just haven't been motivated to gather things for them. With one exception: I did spend several hours getting two vanity mounts for my priest.

My warrior already had several vanity epic flying mounts, from doing daily quests at level 70. My priest, although technically my "main", and having much better gear, was still riding his racial epic mount, and flying the standard epic flying mount, because he didn't have anything else. So I was quite happy when during Brewfest the epic ram dropped for my priest. Then I decided I need a new epic flyer too, and started grinding Cenarion Expedition reputation until I was exalted and could buy the hippogryph.

Now why would I spend time and gold on a vanity mount, and not be interested in improving my epic gear? Two reasons: Acquiring epic gear by raiding is only useful for raiding, it is a self-contained cycle, you raid so you can raid more. Nobody needs epic gear to do daily quests, and for heroics I'm more than well enough geared. And the second reason is that vanity items have better lasting value.

Just look at the level 70 vanity epic flyers my warrior is riding, the Netherwing Drake and the Nether Ray. Yes, they required me to grind a lot of daily quests back at level 70. But I'm still using them at level 80, and I will still use them at level 85. My priest spent level 70 gathering raid epics, which I promptly ditched shortly after Wrath of the Lich King came out. And the level 80 epics I'm wearing now with my priest will again be replaced by new gear at level 85, while I'll still be riding the Brewfest ram, and the CE hippogryph mounts.

Yeah, so the vanity mounts are just fluff, and aren't actually any faster than the standard variety. And it seems the main use of some vanity mounts for some people is that they are so big that you can obstruct the access to flight masters with them. But I do like the option to ride something else than my standard horse or flyer, just to pretend that I'm individual. They are for vanity only, but vanity lasts forever, and so do vanity mounts. Epic gear by comparison has a rather short "best before" date.