That has basically been my approach as well, albeit with the added reflection that when I started caring less about the FOMO in the game I also started caring less about the game as a whole. And I think that’s a recognition of how much of the gameplay in WoW revolves around FOMO and chasing the carrot.
So it’s a solution that worked, but you lose some of what makes WoW compelling in the process.
Worth it, but not without a cost.
Same! When I initially started back up, I wanted to get all mounts, didn’t do much end game - was just lvling a bunch of alts and mount farming… While the normal dungeon mounts were fine, as I could just log in whenever, put on some TV show and kill stuff, the ones that really knocked me off of it was the event mounts…
Love Rocket, Brewfest Ram & Kodo, the anniversary mounts (That at that time wasn’t a 100% chance)… It started feeling like, I wanted to do something else, but the game was telling me “uh uuuuh! if you go do BGs now, you may have to wait a year for the mount! and who knows if it exists in that time!”
So I just decided not to have my goals set around collectables… There will be mounts, tmogs, pets, etc. that I simply wont have time or motivation to go for, and that is fine… But at the same time, now I don’t really farm anything… So as you wrote, for me it meant the overall appeal of running old content while chilling has dissappeared…
I was super hardcore from early Vanilla and until mid WotLK. I was on top of the mounts and pets and had as many achievements as possible when the acheivement system was introduced in patch 3.0. I remember having the Albino Drake in TBC and how that was a big deal.
Even in WotLK the game was still pretty respectful with grinds and absurd goals to pursue. There was the Insane in the Membrane Feat of Strength and the Time-Lost Proto Drake that both stood out as outliers in the game. Everything else was pretty much just something you got from playing the game normally as you otherwise would. I think that’s the experience people have had in Classic as well. Vanilla and TBC are very easy to “complete” and then WotLK has a bit more time-consumption to it, and then in the upcoming Cata it really starts to ramp up.
And yeah, from then on Blizzard started being more agressive with grindy achievements and collectables. I specifically remember the patch in BfA where they added 32 mounts. That was insane. That took the mount collection meta-game from something everyone could pursue completionism in to something that was for the dedicated few.
And more recently it’s all the time-limited events and promotions that have been cranked up to eleven. Even the ones that aren’t time-limited – like any of the ones in Dragonflight – still feel like it because you kind of have to finish things up before the next expansion, because they’ll be near impossible to farm and complete alone when everyone else has moved on.
So it’s all a bit exhausting. And on the one hand it’s easy to say just forget about it and play casually, but on the other hand Blizzard also continues to put all of it into the game because lots of players do actually pursue it recklessly and just devote more and more time to WoW in pursuit of these rewards. MoP Remix is certainly an example of that right now.
Anyway, I shall go play some Diablo IV now, because there are some Seasonal rewards that I have to get before they dissapear in a couple of months. 
As I said previously. I was going out for pizza tonight.
I have my pizza.
…Now your back to continue where you left off?..<.<
I’ve not really read anything which I think I need to respond to.
A few people talking about how they got over their “FOMO” hopefully that will help people.
Im a proud plunderlord. I did my time.
Shaming players for doing the content they want to do is absolutely antithetical to
Gatekeepers need to RTR (return to reddit).
Seasonal things keep the game lively. I’m sure the naysayers proclaiming how terrible Plunderstorm / Pandaria remix etc can be summed up into one of two camps.
Lack of self control. A common trait in those born after the year 2000 and before 1980 both. They simply cannot help themselves getting swept up into the hype for something becacuse they’ve been coded from an early age to accept capitalist-corporate propaganda.
Lack of self actualisation. This one isn’t so much tied to a demographic but rather a socialisation issue in where maladjusts unable to find meaning in something physical, emotional or spiritual or otherwise offline devout their personality and energy into whatever trends are going on online, and become extremely - almost pathologically - unwell and worked up when they are either
a) met with someone of a similar disposition but are oppositional to them or
b) being given a sense of left-out / disenfranchisement / unable to take part in a particular trend.
The first problem can be treated with therapy, the second one is unfortunately far more difficult a combination of poor parenting, habitual behaviours formerly used as coping mechanisms that have now become toxic, self imposed (or lately state mandated) social isolation and unbalanced brain chemistry.
But the TL;DR is - play how you want to play, FOMO is an illusion that some perennial players who have acquired a ‘relationship’ with WoW have created to justify their latest outrage with Blizzard - a capitalist corporation who is designed by principle to leech you for all your money they can.
I agree with the core principle though, play smarter, not harder.
Was the same for me, i dont play at all anymore and those actions were a major factor towards that decision to stop.
Im not even buying the next expansion either because of this and the fact i only played one month of the previous 2 expansions.
Once you realise just how predatory the game is and how easy it is to ignore it.
There is very little keeping you tied to this game anymore.
Worked for me on other mmorpgs too, i stopped playing them all.
Worked the same for me with expansions too.
First i didnt buy the last ff14 expansion, then i didnt buy the last gw2 expansion.
Once i realised i can cope without them im not even interested in TWW
If you enjoyed it, cool. I’m not talking about you.
Doesn’t really sound like you’re the type they describe?
If you are proud and enjoyed Plunderstorm, why are you then hit by someone talking to the ones that hated every second they played of it?
They surely do. The issue is however, when what they add to the live game is a re-skin of an existing mount, and when they see player engagement is dropping off (As they usually do towards the end of a season), they add a completely new mount model or something super rare that you can obtain only in a certain time period, dragging you back in.
I don’t think (At least not my understanding) people in here are arguing that the ones that get dragged in do lack self-control and should “break free”, but the discussion shouldn’t just be boiled down like OP did with “Just go outside, call a friend, stop playing”. Thats argumentation that lacks a nuance.
Personally I’m not expecting Blizzard to change, nor is it what I’m arguing for. I just think we can have a nice discussion that is nuanced and has multiple perspectives.
I can only speak for myself and what worked for me but maybe it’ll help.
You need to break the cycle. With my ADD FOMO can hit me bloody hard - to the point it consumes my enjoyment entirely of just playing the game.
A recent example is OW2 - I bought and completed every battlepass up to season 7, done every event, ground every achievement etc, even though for a couple of seasons it had felt like a chore.
As soon as I said “enough” and dropped the game I finally felt free. It took a couple seasons but now I occasionally dip into the game for a match or two then drop out. No BP to worry about grinding, don’t care about the store, the achievements, etc.
It used to be so bad I wouldn’t buy a game on PlayStation without checking out the trophies first, making sure they were doable, none had been lost due to servers going offline, etc. I had been doing this for around a decade when a few years back a whole bunch of games (I think UbiSoft ones?) announced a whole plethora of server shutdowns. Told myself I wasn’t going to worry about it. It stressed me out for months. Then the day passed and I can finally just buy and play games for fun again. I only aim for the platinum these days if I really love a game, like FFVII Remake/Rebirth, etc.
Break the cycle. Take a break if you need to to get over it and come back with a new, refreshed outlook on it. FOMO can die in a fire and specifically targets people like me with mental issues or just those susceptible to it. It’s scummy and needs to be pushed out the gaming community.
I mean some people do stupid things when they are bored. And some people have Guilty Pleasures engageing with trash content because for their current mood it is just on the right grade of “So bad it becomes good”. I mean I heave skipped over all of Clawcious answers just because I whas bored too and I thought I get something good to read and well he did not disapoint. Those research papers are exactly the good stuff I desire.
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