Freedom From Missing Out

Hearthstone (11.09.2026), Warcraft Rumble (09.09.2026) & Twitch (12.09.2026) Screenshot.

I'm a creature of habit. Someone who can easily stick to some silly routine and repeat it to a point of absurdity. From doomscrolling social media and sites in a specific order to log into specific games... In other words, a poor bastard like me is a perfect target for Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) - this stupid feeling where you feel like you "fall behind" or "lose out" if you don't do something as soon as possible or within a day. An obvious example of that could be a "daily reward" in multiplayer and/or mobile game.

Unfortunately, just being aware of this flaw doesn't mean it's easy for you to overcome it. I caught myself in a situation where I keep catching myself being chained to repeating things I don't really enjoy doing anymore or arriving to an obvious conclusion that this is a stupid way to waste my time. This is idiotic, but that's the truth of my situation. As I started to approach my 25th birthday, I started to slowly break free of these chains. Very slowly.

This post is going to serve not only as a retrospective of sorts, but also as a way to reinforce me breaking free from FOMO tricks attached to them. It was a perfect opportunity to revisit this blog since one of its functions has always been to free my mind from things I've been fixated on. I feel inspired and determined, so that must count for something.

Warcraft Rumble.

My deep descent into this game started with Warcraft's 30th Anniversary. Announcement of PC port and my desire for having some kind of "Warcraft fix" resulted in me giving Warcraft Rumble a go. It turns out I really needed some quick and mindless time wasters. This game quickly took a primal slot in my daily routine (whenever organized or not) as it's easy to launch it for a few daily fights and such.

This game is unbelievably grindy. You know, that's probably what I actually missed. Slowly crawling towards a certain goal that would allow you to reach another goal, and so on and so forth. Gameplay is okay and there's a lot of fine PvE & Co-op content to enjoy, even as a F2P player (like me). There's also a PvP and you're practically forced to play it due to Victory Road rewards. Most of the time, you have to suffer against cheaters, whales or both. It's not fun and there's no way it's going to get any better.

On the other hand, PvE content is, again, quite nice. Zones, Dungeons, Sieges and Molten Core (the only Raid) provide nice challenges for you to overcome once you clear all locations in their Normal & Heroic modes. Co-op feels pretty fun in Warcraft Rumble. Molten Core is probably my favorite part of the game with its bosses since I feel like it really makes the game shine.

Some of My Warcraft Rumble Army.

With that being said, I pretty much exhausted all the grind I could get out of Warcraft Rumble. I started to naturally forget and lose track of things like events and daily logins, which is pretty much an equivalent of beating a dead horse in this case. While I've come very far in more than 1.5 year of playing, there're still something I could go for... but why? Constant rotation of events exist to hold on the proactive part of game's audience and I've been taking that bait for way too long. Trying to level all Minis to Epic rarity is just too much, it's easier to stop at all Rares as a minimum.

All Sigils & Minis were collected. Onyxia was beaten. I overleveled Dungeons a long time ago. Molten Core & Sieges are the only noteworthy content to play, but even then it's just farming Valor for the sake of it. All datamined Leader skins from Login Calendar have been obtained. I've reached a point where levelling all Minis to Level 31 and bringing them to Epic/Legendary rarity is painfully slow (they really want you to pay money at this point). All Leaders have been updated to Diamond quality and any remaining Valor is a deadweight. I experienced all this game could me offer. This is a dead end.

As I went through dungeons, Molten Core and Sieges lately-ish, it made me realize that I should've probably stepped away from Warcraft Rumble a few months earlier. I'm not going to recommend the game at this point, but I also don't want to discourage anyone from giving it a try. Just be warned that it's very grindy because the idea is to make you pay your way out of it. If you need a game like that, it might just fit you like a glove.

Hearthstone.

Originally, my return to Hearthstone should've happened at the same time as my journey in Warcraft Rumble. However, the latter had all my attention to a point where I completely forgot about Warcraft Anniversary. Missing out on Hogger Warrior skin and WoW-inspired card back was a bit of shame, but my reaction of the game was "oh well, that's probably for the best" since there were already a lot of arguments for me to not go back to Hearthstone.

With that being said, the announcement and release of Cataclysm expansion made me overlook things like ugly 3D models for some hero skins and Shadowlands tainting the game through Murder at Castle Nathria expansion. Because of those things, my initial focus was directed towards Mercenaries & Battleground modes. Mercenaries was pretty fun, but its grindy nature starts to show itself rather quickly and that kind of put me off from going too deep into it, I think it's probably better than Warcraft Rumble, if I'm being honest.

Battlegrounds was my first experience with auto battlers and it sucked me in right away. I initially started with regular version, then switched to Duos and after a while started swapping between the two. I played during the Season 12 and finished entire Battlegrounds Track, which must mean I played this mode a lot. Even the rare insults in a form of Shadowlands characters being used as heroes didn't ruin the fun for me all that much. Had some favorite builds figured out with Mechs, Demons and Undead. While Season 13 did seem to have some interesting things going on, I just kind of stopped playing it and focus on other aspects of Hearthstone. I'll say that Battlegrounds is the easiest mode to get into and probably the most fun to play as it stands.

Demon Highlight from Battlegrounds Season 12.

Undead Highlight from Battlegrounds Season 12.

Mech Highlight from Battlegrounds Season 12.

I wanted to make use of Trial Cards by revisiting past Adventures (Curse of Naxxramas-Knights of the Frozen Throne) and clearing their Heroic versions. It was fun to go through and reminisce about the past and tie up some loose ends. Using newer cards made this mostly easier, but some fights required a specific approach with many trials and errors (Arch-Thief Rafaam, Chess and Lich King, for example). My initial plan was to clear all Adventures with Trial Cards where they can be utilized, but I missed out on that opportunity. At least I completed Dungeon Run & Monster Hunt... Puzzle Lab caught a bug in Patch 36.0 just when I got to it. I appreciate the irony of it, but not having to wait like a couple of months until it gets fixed.

Standard format is fucking miserable. I had some good moments with Demon Hunter, Shaman and Warrior, but generally I didn't enjoy my time playing it due to sheer amount of bullshit I end up facing on average. I constantly feel at disadvantage and at mercy of Hearthstone's RNG. It's great when things go well for me, obviously. Otherwise, it results in me releasing my frustration/anger through certain choice of words. I could argue that it's healthy in "let it out" way, but I don't like this anyway.

This was a primary decision for me to pivot towards Wild format in late May after I learned how great Discard Warlock was around that time. My attitude towards Wild was "expected bullshit", which felt more fair compared to Standard. Due to all cards being available at once, there would be enough decks (popular and not) that would completely destroy you. I was right. Sometimes it didn't feel nice to be countered, naturally, but that was to be expected. It didn't cause as much of a frustration as losing in Standard because, you know, it's a Wild format. Of course something like that would happen sometimes. What surprised me was me actually reaching Legend rank in like 3 days of playing, starting at Bronze 10. That was pretty damn cool and fun.

Me Earning Legend Rank in Hearthstone's Wild Format in May 2026.

My impromptu earning of Legend rank felt like a good stopping point for my stay in Hearthstone. Besides general frustration of Standard format, another reason why I started considering it is the constant in-game events with its unique kind of XP system. On one hand, it's great for Free-2-Play players like me to get some cards since they usually reward you with some card packs. Then again, events like that can (and did, in my case) push your FOMO buttons because you don't wanna lose out on card packs or cosmetic rewards.

Another good indication of ditching Hearthstone was Escape From Violent Hold. I just had generally bad feeling about it that seem to largely have been proven correctly. Demon Hunter was fun and playable for a moment, but then just dropped. Due to some fucking ironic turn of events, I managed to win a Standard Pre-Purchase Bundle in r/Hearthstone giveaway. My sarcastic comment I left to participate in it is just a nice touch. Still, this did end up encouraging me to play more some more Standard... It's all the same. Wild has changed significantly during that time, but it seems like Discard Warlock regained its spot after the first major patch.

My Favored Hero Skins in Hearthstone.

Overall, the game is just not in the good spot. Gameplay balance feels stagnant and not fun, letting specific toxic archetypes plague the meta while any kind of experimentation or going against it feels pretty punishing. The amount of FOMO you see in various Events is disgusting. I finally managed to complete Puzzle Lab and Rumble Run, but I don't want to run into another sudden bug that would stop my Adventure progress. I also managed to get at least one alternate skin for each class, which is another great goal to stop at.

Twitch.

This part is going to be short. On October 14, 2025, Twitch has fully introduced its Watch Streaks feature after testing it for a certain amount of time. It's enabled for all streams by default, but streamers can opt out of it if they wish to do so. I don't think I really need to explain how this feeds into FOMO by ensuring the user retention and I took the bait since Twitch streams are often serve as perfect background noise for me.

I hated this feature right away, specifically because I knew how easily I would get hooked by it. When you get 100+ Watch Streaks across a plethora of channels, you just know that this is too much, and I made a reasonable decision that should've been done since the start: stop bothering and substantially cut down on retaining these Watch Streaks. On top of that, I decided to purposefully "bloat" the amount of channels I follow on Twitch to make retaining streaks unsustainable for most of them. I still keep Watch Streaks growing for certain streams and I keep it in mind for potential cuts in the future.

Conclusion.

What annoys me the most about this post is that it was supposed to be written and published around May or June. Not getting delayed to mid September because I was (and still am, arguably) a complete mess and it made dealing with these stupid FOMO traps that much harder. At least it wasn't the case of me spending actual money on cosmetics and other bullshit like that, so it certainty could've been worse. Still, it was one of the contributing factors in me wasting my free time. I should've addressed this earlier, but at least I finally got around to taking care of it.

I'll be uninstalling both Warcraft Rumble & Hearthstone after publishing this article because I just hit the wall with both these games. There's not much for me to do there, considering the current state of each title. When it comes to Twitch, as I mentioned before, it's still in progress when it comes to FOMO nonsense.

Me publishing this "article" should really mark an ending to this. Hopefully, this would be just a start for another short revitalization of this blog. Not only because I've been sitting on a few post ideas, but I just need this sort of thing to distract myself from other issues that plagued my daily routine for far too long.