After playing World of Warcraft for 15 years, I started becoming increasingly bored and disgruntled with the game. The game being grindy and repetitive is no real surprise, I mean it's an MMO. But the one thing that was really frustrating was paying monthly for a subscription and a huge chunk of cash for an expansion, but still having extra stuff flashed in my face all the time that was simply not possible to earn in-game. Mount skins, cosmetics, miscellaneous stuff that is only available in the Blizzard store. They also began adding loyalty items that require being subscribed every single month, and doing repetitive, extremely boring stuff on top of the other repetitive boring stuff, so basically double dipping on your grind, which really isn't fun.
Aside from that, I also played other games that required a heavy amount of grinding too, and each one of them had similarly frustrating elements. Destiny 2, overwatch, Battlefield, Fortnite, Halo, and the list goes on. Each of them has the same issue: fear of missing out. FOMO basically makes it so that if you don't seize the opportunity to spend real life money, you will never be able to obtain something really cool, because it's only there for a short time, and then it's gone, and you are made to feel guilty and bad about it. It's just kind of depressing playing kind of games and realizing that you are now mentally dependent on financial transactions in order to get the full enjoyment of the game. That to me is a very very awful way to live life, and it really messes with your emotions
So I ditched every game that had any element of an in-game purchase. This is honestly helped my mental health a huge, huge amount. Now, I only play games that either have no microtransactions in them at all, or are completely free and 100% possible to play with no purchase required at all. So games like team fortress, deadlocked, Stardew Valley, and many other indie games that you can purchase and then never have to worry about getting suckered into the microtransaction cycle for
I was just talking about farmville the other day, howbmassive it was. Feel like it was an early example of this
My 80-year-old mother is stil hooked on Hay Day (2012 Farmville clone). She doesn't alarm-clock overnight events any more, but that could be because she can't sleep through the night now. Got a team of other old ladies around the world for contests, and it's right on the edge of where I think it's great that she's got something to keep her engaged versus might need an addiction intervention.
I'm not usually one for those types of games but I had a lot of fun with the player economy of Hayday. You don't even need to do any farming, there were always desperate players selling low and buying high lol
WoW auction house feelings right there. Dunno how it is nowadays, but I remember that back on Battle for Azeroth, that was the only way to get the 5 million gold for a super exclusive mount