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’d you don’t have a job, and can play 12 hours a day to farm that gear. Great! Enjoy school life. But adults don’t have time to farm all that shit, purchasing is effectively the only way to get it. It is disingenuous to conflate "being obtainable ’ with “no need to ever purchase”.
There’s a list of 2000 pieces. And only 5 sets that you can buy. Also every month you get free trader’s tender for simply logging in. You use that to buy those pieces. If you do a few world quests you get even more. I literally cap out on the monthly 1k tender by playing a few hours. Why are you people being so negative for no reason.
There’s plenty of things to hate. There’s plenty of things even blizzard are guilty of. Look at overwatch for thousdands of reasons. But wow is one of the games that’s most respectful of your time. Nowadays and as far as MMOs go, that is. I literally have a 4 piece set without ever stepping foot in a normal raid. Only did LFR once, got 1 piece. The other 3 were given for free. You get so much shit in this game by simply logging in and playing a couple of hours it’s insane.
If you want the entire transmog collection the game has to offer, that’s been released over the course od 20 years, yes, you have to grind. But let’s not pretend you need to play a lot to have some nice sets. That hasn’t been true in a long time.
The length of your explanation should make you realize why paying is easier. Hell, I’d pay not to read your explanation.
Play the game for a few hours or pay. Yeah, complicated. You sound like you have too much disposable income if you’re so willing to pay for stuff… also, some of us enjoy playing games and don’t mind doing it.