A letter to Blizzard - Twinking

Quick followup. The characters made and some BGs have been played. I have played low level moonkin to a very high level (Can you even call it that without actual ratings?) in the past, but I’m certainly rusty. Rest of my gear is just whatever the allied races start with.

Absolutely destroying everything, as expected. Can’t come even close to a 1 shot though (Best starsurge crit self buffed was about 1/4 of someone’s hp). And judging by how much damage I was taking, the TTK in general at those levels is pretty low.

Wearing 11 looms (Weapon counts as 1), enchanted, and I honestly feel about the same power level as a twink in the 20-29s bracket, maybe missing about 15 int and 20 secondaries, but that’s nothing.

If I were so inclined (I am not) I could easily make a 20 Zandalari druid, put every loom on it with enchants, slaughter my way to lvl 30. Mail the looms back, make a new zandalari druid, and repeat the process if all I wanted to do was slaughter random levellers.

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So then it went literally precisely as how I told everyone it’d go.

Removing twinks won’t do anything in the long run. Levelers will get destroyed either way.

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I’d like to posit a slightly… worrying(?) question.

What do twinks actually get out of being as powerful as possible in their respective bracket? Arbitrary battleground wins?

Compare that to what I get on this new character I’ve made, that I’m levelling casually through playing BGs. Those arbitrary battleground wins are now experience, I get more XP by winning more often, the games are likely shorter, and so I level faster.

I haven’t invested anything concrete into this one character, because all the heirlooms are interchangeable and not wasted after the character hits 110 or whatever. I’ve essentially done zero work and I’m deliberately getting an edge in low level content to win more often.

Is this suddenly fine now that I’m gaining experience? It’s logical to level as fast as possible, and since enchanting heirlooms is essentially zero effort, there’s no negative to it from the player in question’s perspective, yet it’s making the game worse for everyone who isn’t doing that.

Strange how a philosophical question about morality and value popped up in this debate, but here we are /shrug

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I can’t speak for everyone but my own reasons for playing twinks is because I just enjoy the customization (there’s much more at 60 than lv120 has), the gearing process (well… before they ruined that with removing helm enchants and bfa’s change where heroic loot was put in the same loot table as normal meaning all bosses now have a 20+ item loot table and it’s impossible to get loot) and the numbers on my screen more. I treat this 60 warrior as if it was max level, I try to do as much as I can on it. It’s got over 220 days played, 60+ exalted reputations, almost 80k hks and a lot of other things.

tldr: It feels more like an MMORPG than endgame does.

I also enjoy just hanging out on my twinks and dueling people, just chatting in durotar and collecting things. Tier sets, old rare items, etc…

Edit: To me it’s kind of like an iron-man challenge-kind-of-thing. Just… without the ironman… so… just a challenge. w/e, you get the point. it’s a beloved pet project.

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I think this speaks to a deeper problem with the game as a whole, but I’m not sure you’ve quite answered the question. I agree the sense of progression, customization, and community are what attracted me to the bracket in the first place, especially with endgame working how it does.

But that’s not my reason for wanting to win battlegrounds. That’s my reason for playing the character, if you see the distinction.

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Well wanting to play the character is more important than anything in the game isn’t it? Well, apart from… wanting to play the actual game.

Honestly my 60 warrior and my other twinks are really what keep me subbed… has been for the past few expansions.

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Agreed, perhaps it’s better put like this.

At what point did what I’m doing become acceptable? Despite it having the same outcome. Was it the point I placed some quantifiable value on my actions, that make it easier for other people to understand them? (Earning more experience through winning more battlegrounds and winning them faster) Or was it just a matter of ‘not being a twink’?

If it’s the former, does that mean there’s some sliding scale on which we as a society measure “Morally” questionable actions against their potential value? I use morally in the loosest possible manner, but still, can’t think of a better word right now.

And if it’s the latter, then what really changed?

It could obviously still be somewhere in between, or neither, but it’s an interesting question.

Anyways enough of the philosophy lecture.

Thank you OP.

I am a bit too pissed to comment deeply (after race changing one of my 19 twinks just to find out queue time at 19 was suddenly 49min…).

My 2cents to Blizz: if you are that obsessed with fresh players getting destroyed:

  1. delete heirlooms or…
  2. …put a ilvl minimum recquirement to random pvp queue.

Twink brothers and sisters: Vote with your wallet. Cancel sub or let it run and play 20 FTP, other games, play music or just wait until Classic this summer.

I even suspect this stealth move from Blizzard to push twink players there.

If they go all in on the hate of this communauty, they might as well in Classic make you gain exp points in BGs to make sure twinking is impossible.

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if you are that obsessed with fresh players getting destroyed:

This has been a core design issue with WoW for a long time now. You can’t expect new players to win outright. L2p.

I wouldn’t even call it a “design issue”. This is just how MMORPGs are supposed to work. These kinds of games can not work in any other way because the very core idea of the whole entire genre is ‘character progression’. The second that you start punishing players for gearing their characters (which is essentially what this boils down to, punishment) you have already screwed up.

PvP in an MMORPG can and will never be ‘fair’ to ‘new players’ or ‘levelers’ unless you remove the entire ability to obtain and equip gear for your characters and well, good luck with that one.

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All I hear is “mimimimimimimiii” I don’t have any skills, I’m tired of getting outPLAYED by someone more SKILLED than me, so I resort to ABUSING A POOR SYSTEM that allows me to pump up my dmg stats 500% higher than anyone else, thus allowing me to become a borderline hacking GOD.
Yeah, that’s you.

I’m sooooooo glad you are now stuck with the same hacker wannabes in the same bracket.

You are the type that would use wallhacks in a battlefield shooter IF there was 0% chance of getting caught. You can’t bring the skills to the game, so you try to find every possible exploit to beat your opponents, not just beat, but totally R-word them.

HAVE FUN WITH YOUR OVER GEARED GRIEFER FRIENDS.
Haaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaa…

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How did you get that from a single thing that has been said in the last 20 posts?

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That’s just the thing; We’re not.

Btw… it’s because of people like you that there are some twinks that are forming guilds/groups with the sole purpose of farming new players and levelers in battlegrounds now. Voice chat and all.

I have tried to explain to you that Twinking is not about farming levelers but you insist on making it so, which is why I assume that they’re going to give you what you want.

So yeah, good luck dealing with those people now.

Oh and i’m not one of those people. i’ve got better things to do so don’t take it out on me.

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50% is quite a lot.

It’s obviously nothing compared to what Blizzard are doing at max level, which is a whole another level of insanity best left for another time.

Blizzard puts round about 0 effort into WoW’s levelling game at this point, and it absolutely shows. This is one way in which it shows.

That’s highly illogical to me. Surely if you remain on the same level for longer, you’ll have more items for your current level, which means a higher chance to have more epic-RNG’d items for your current level. While you can surely make the argument that twinks already get a lot of loot from outside of BG’s, it’s very hard for me to imagine how it’s an advantage to non-twinks relative to twinks.

Completely agreed. I am not blaming twinks for this - in fact I’m not blaming twinks for anything. I am entirely blaming Blizzard for setting the game up in this way.

For my part, I think twinking should be an afterthought, although one can certainly make the argument that there should be less brackets.

In order for there to be less brackets, there should be less scaling, since we want to keep players within a reasonable range of each other in terms of their power levels (which, incidentally, is the system twinking intentionally tries to break), and that implies some sort of squish.

Whether it’s a level squish or another numbers squish or something else entirely I don’t really care about in the context of this conversation (Although I do have a preference)

There’s a bloody reason why the queue expanded to >2 hours for people who were levelling when the twinks aren’t in there. The reason for this is that the twinks drove everybody else out. It’ll take some time before they realise it’s changed and come back.

I think this might be oversimplifying.

It doesn’t take much to get heirlooms in every slot bar boots, belt, gloves, bracers, and then enchant them all, and that’ll put you well above the “average” player in battlegrounds for a good 80 levels. Twinks only really start to get legitimately powerful compared to people in good looms when set bonuses and sockets come into play.

Dear twinks,

Your salty tears of Unfathomable sadness sustain me

Get over it already, the your fun to 1 hit people is over, buhu, play twink in Vanilla instead, even more broken.

I feel sorry for the innocent new players that get farmed by vengeful twinks as a result of behavior of people like you.

I actually do, that’s not sarcasm.

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Twinking is just a symptom. People want smaller realm or battlegroup communities where they actually know the people they play against. And they don’t want to be kicked around, they want stability, one patch and your WoW life as you know it can be over because you get nerfed or buffed or whatever. Your class or spec may suddenly be weak and useless.

I am a casual player. I have played WoW casually for over 12 years now. I like my several random bgs each night. But because my class (the only class i really have been playing over the years) is in an awful state right now and because i won’t be able to do rated pvp or raiding my gear will always suck to the point where i am just a punching ball. Do you understand now why i resorted to twinking? I’ll gladly play endgame if it’s fun and fair. It is not right now.

And i have never threatened to leave on the forums but and i won’t now, i will just let my subscription run out this time. It is mind-boggling how you could let WoW deteriorate this quickly after LEGION which was undoubtedly the best expansion since WotLK.

Twinks should just unsubscribe from this game. No one will ever miss them, not even Blizzard. Their “huge” community, as it turned out, is not so huge, since they cannot even gather the necessary number of people at 20-29 levels to play among themselves. So do everyone a favor, stop whining, unsubscribe from this game and get out of here far and forever.

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