Ok well this is gonna be a long post. Consider it this twink’s open letter to the pvp community. Putting my thoughts on paper and addressing some general comments and sentiments I have seen on this topic. I figured it would be more convenient to do it here than to keep jumping between threads basically making the same points in all of them.
Indeed. Let us speak frankly here; getting shafted in this situation means to have our queues killed off, our characters rendered useless, and being told to join the hamster wheel (chasing the carrot-on-a-stick as gnomechomsky put it) or stop playing altogether. I honestly don’t think it’s a bad thing that structured pvp’s queue segregation was removed, just like in the good old days. Letting people focus on what they actually like (in my case structured pvp and Vanilla-TBC-WotLK content), instead of forcing us into BfA by taking away the (perfectly viable) alternative.
In fact in some regards things were better than ever. With dungeon drop scaling everyone has a much easier time keeping their gear up-to-date, especially when using heirlooms for most slots. And with exp-off and dungeon level scaling we had access to so much more content than we used to. Not just more oppertunities for us to enjoy content from our chosen expansions, but also more oppertunities to help other players during our downtime from bg’s since gaining experience was no longer a concern. For a few months wow seemed to move in a direction that was less about the grind to max level, and more about being able to take your time to enjoy the content wherever you were. The world was your oyster, and you could do whatever you wanted at whatever pace you wanted. If you wanted to spend more time than exp gain would allow you at any point in the game, then you could exp lock without being locked out of part of the content (structured pvp). It was great.
For a while I was cautiously optimistic that these changes were the first step in breathing new life into lower level content. But in the end it appears to have been a half measure. You see; if all you are left with as an exp locked character is PvE then you essentially end up with static, unchanging content. Unlike PvP which is dynamic, and ever changing. Without it you are just going through the motions at some point. Every dungeon and raid will first become routine, and then boring. This is where PvP comes in. Every player thinks differently, every team acts differently. The only consistent factor is the bg objective, but figuring out how to accomplish it and outwit the other team is what really helps to keep every match exciting.
Some people see the queue segregation and just think “well fine now twinks can just fight each other”, but the reality is that there aren’t enough exp locked characters to have our own queues. So if blizzard really isn’t willing to reconsider templates and we have to choose between one (twinks as they are now) or the other (being rushed to max level), then I think having that choice/freedom is much more important. In most brackets twinking provides a far lesser advantage than it once did. Everyone has easy access to the same heirlooms (which are more or less on par with good dungeon drops) leaving only a few slots to be updated while leveling, and good affordable enchants are a dime a dozen. Even I could easily afford it, and I was using a level 29 as my main source of income. While leveling my more recent characters I would just lock exp every once in a while, update most of my non-heirloom slots, and then jump back into bg’s. It was no trouble for me really, and in all honesty it is my responsibility to have all my ducks in a row if I decide to join a battleground.
Between exp-off, heirlooms, and dungeon gear that scales on drop, they made it so unbelievably easy to keep your gear up-to-date that it defies belief that there are still people complaining about twinks outgearing them. I have been on both sides of the isle for extended periods of time, and I never considered complaining about twinks existing even before I became one. I am a strong proponent for a variation of the template system that was tried in legion, but instead of basing it on currently equipped gear (which caused some issues) make it a customizable template drawing gear from the exact same sources as a person who ran dungeons and did quests for them. Basically compile a BiS list for every bracket (10-19, 20-29 etc.) and let people set their gear accordingly based on their spec and stats of choice. But that is neither here nor there. In general gear mattering in a progression based MMO should be a given, not shunning people for being geared well by killing their queues. The fact that’s what is happening right now is the real issue.
I never minded heirlooms being implemented because they made it much easier for people to keep their gear up to date as they leveled. Bringing them closer to our level of power without taking an integral part of the game away from us. Nor would I mind other similar steps being taken to bridge whatever gap remains. I believe that is the mindset people need to have when looking for a solution to this issue, from both sides. Most of us aren’t ‘scrubs’ looking for easy kills, or ‘bullies’, or ‘literally cheaters’. Most twinks I have interacted with (and twink communities I have been a part of) over the years were some of the more welcoming and helpful players in the game. Coincidentally they were also some of the better and more motivated players.
After all most twinks have been around the block many times where it concerns pvp, and do something for long enough and you will become good at it. A lot of us used to compete at end-game at some earlier point in time, but just got tired of doing the same song and dance every season just to end up right back where we started. Or we still do and just need an alt or two we can just ignore that entire process on. Grind once, done forever.
Blizzard: "With the introduction of stat templates in Legion, players with XP-gains turned off couldn’t get a significant advantage over players with XP-gains enabled, so we combined the brackets for low level battlegrounds. Now that we’ve removed stat templates, we’ve returned XP-Off players to their own bracket."
If you guys really think this twink business is an issue and want to fix it in a way that doesn’t screw people over, try the following: Switch to customizable templates that instantly let everyone ‘twink out’ their character with BiS gear in structured pvp. After all in terms of combat performance there will be no difference between a player that farmed BiS gear, or a player that picks them out of a BiS list and adds them to said template. Right now locking your experience bar for whatever reason means you are locked out of structured pvp in it’s entirety. That is an objectively bad design choice. Because there really aren’t that many of us as some of the people complaining like to say there are, and the queue itself has been broken for quite some time. As pointed out in the quotes below.
Erikpreistly<Perfect Losers>
Logged on a 19 Twink today - spoke to my Guild master, queued WSG - he confirmed both factions were queued up in the right numbers to get a pop. 1 hour 15 minutes later no pop.
Ellipsìs<BBC NEWS>
The queues have been broken since around WoD. And I would have been absolutely fine with this change if they would fix the queues.
Rammin<The Anti Guild>
Casuals are more likely to pay hard cash to play than peeps who spend their lifes on line here, farming to pay for their subs, Thus casuals more likely contributing more to development.
Well if we’re talking money… Basically every penny I ever put into this game has been wasted in one single patch (first 3.2 and now 8.1.5). I just did the math and I’m out like 1000 bucks. We got shafted so hard we can actually put a price tag on it. In all honesty I think blizzard owes us a bit more consideration than just killing our battlegrounds again. Worse even; they just snuck this into the patch without so much as a heads up. In my case finding out the hard way has led to an additional loss of 84 bucks (my sub renewed literally 1 day before I found this out as I had spent the last few months farming gold and gear to building up my twink roster). So not only did they show me to the door, they basically flipped me the bird on my way out.
We twinks may be a minority, but a large number of us are old wow vets from way back and have contributed more than our fair share in money and time just like everyone else. Including helping people gear and level, sponsoring people (since we had less use for gold beyond a certain point), or recruiting people into the game to begin with. I was actually just in the process of introducing another friend to the game and he will be joining me in classic now. But he certainly won’t be buying BfA. Heck even my non-twink roommate who also joined in '07 finally dropped the game for good during this expansion, thanks to BfA.
Lower level content used to be about enjoying the experience, now it’s main focus is gaining experience points while getting you to max level as quickly as possible. And that is where the hamster wheel awaits… The days of finding content you liked and saying to yourself ‘yes this is what I can totally see myself doing for years to come’ are gone. You just have to hope that the next expansion’s content is at least as good as the current one, and… keep… grinding… Fitting that I am making this point during BfA, an expansion that has been met with a noticably mixed reception from the community at large.
Rammin<The Anti Guild>
Couldnt care what level it is, games meant to be enjoyed by all, not just those that can afford more time in it and create misery for others.
Then what is your opinion on maxed out 120’s?, same story different bracket.
The irony of this is never lost on me. It’s like some people think we’re dirtying up their little corner of this MMO. But many (like the guy quoted below) forget that battlegrounds used to be about competition, not a place for levelers to… well… level up.
Sarathustra<Boxed>
what do you mean normal, changed, normal, changed?
That would suggest twinks were in normal bgs for a long time. They werent.
I started in LK and pretty soon started doing bgs. Twinks were never in the same bgs as non twinks, untill Legion pre patch.
Actually, from patch 1.0 until patch 3.2 hit twinks were in normal bg’s. That was before the time of experience in battlegrounds. That’s all of vanilla, all of TBC, and a large portion of WotLK. There were ways to solve this without killing off twinks, now moreso than back then.
Liljon
A lot of people fail to realize that twinks aren’t the issue here. It’s game design, which could really be fixed with a few tweaks that Will not even change 120 at all. People are oblivious
^ This.
Rammin<The Anti Guild>
"Why allow players have such a massive advantage over others in the same level, the gear was never intended for this advantage it was for pve, yet developed into this bulling monster."Then the above also applies at max level? PvE gear>PvPGear at 120. There are very few levels which this actually true. 10 - 19 and 20 -29, 59 and 110 are the outliners. I did a test, (I’ve posted links to the armories at least 3 times on these forums) comparing a Loomed Level 39 MW Monk vs a Twink Level 39 MW Monk. I do wonder how many twins people actually saw in BG’s, outside of the more popular Twinking brackets (19, 29 and 70) I remain to be convinced that you saw more than 1 or 2 twinks per BG if that, based on my time playing in the 39 and 60 brackets.
^ Someone give this man a cookie, stat. 
Rammin<The Anti Guild>
Always feel like twinks are some small man syndrome, taking lifes frustrations on some pixels. Some people want to level by pvp, not to be rolf stomped by people who have spent a year or more in the same level, but I guess about the only feeling of empowerment they only ever going to feel. Why allow players have such a massive advantage over others in the same level, the gear was never intended for this advantage it was for pve, yet developed into this bulling monster.
It was always intended to be used everywhere, otherwise there would be no structured pvp before end-game levels. Because until then pretty much all you have is dungeon and quest gear, just look at the pvp vendors for lower levels like the ‘defilers’ vendor in arathi highlands. They always offered only a small handful of items, yet they did cost pvp currency, which means people would be expected to queue up with mostly PvE gear. At most levels you are guaranteed to wear less PvP gear than PvE gear, even if there are pvp vendors for your bracket. And looking at the gear I came across when doing a mix of rbg’s and random dungeons while leveling; the gear gained from doing rbg’s is identical to their dungeon counterparts now. Even versatility (today’s version of resilience) is not exclusive to PvP gear. They have gone out of their way to mix the two, not seperate them.
Kiirodinya
Twinking is a form of ‘legalized cheating’, and only done by losers that can’t cope otherwise. ACCEPT IT.
Noface
As a PvP-oriented player I find myself not wanting to queue on alts because it’s a waste of my time. It’s not fun. It never will be fun for anyone with twinks allowed. I put it to you that twinking is literally CHEATING, no different to getting an aimbot in an FPS game.
‘Cheating’? This general ‘twinks are exploiters/scrubs/etc.’ mindset really needs to be laid to rest. So let me level with everyone here. Because while I think it is good to have a discussion on this topic and do not wish to deny any of you your place in this game, I do feel like I need to point a few things out. Sharing an old player’s perspective, if you will, from a time before experience gain in battlegrounds. A time when you PvP’d only to PvP.
Back in the old days you knew that if you were in the lower end of the bracket with mediocre gear, you were not entitled to only face equally weak opponents. You were there to crack alliance (or horde) skulls, and if you had players on your side that were stronger than you then that was a good day. You knew when you clicked that queue button that you were stepping onto the battlefield. Not hello kitty island. You would queue up for while when taking a break from leveling out in the world (or during), and if you liked a bracket enough you would stay there and compete. To the point of excluding yourself from all other content (because exp lock was not yet a thing) and dedicating your character of choice solely to PvP at that level.
We twinks are not the majority here, this much is true, but neither is the group that is vehemently anti-twink. I do not believe WoW should cater exclusively to either group, and I think that with the ever increasing ease of gearing up at any point before end-game (as mentioned earlier in this post) that we were definitely on the right track to getting there. We are your friends, your guildies, the people you pass by and cooperate with out in the world, the people you raid with, etc. We are fellow members of our shared community.
My first twink was a just another leveler on his way to max (then 70) and just dabbling in lower level pvp until the day he wasn’t. At some point I decided to plant my feet firmly on the blood-soaked soil, dig in my heels and carry the torch for my faction in my bracket of choice. And I never looked back. Needed a good scrapper in structured?, I had your back. Wanted to invade alliance settlements and lure out a few 70’s to start a fight with?, I had your back. Needed protection from other players out in the open world?, I had your back. Needed boosts or gear?, I had your back. Got killed while leveling or traveling?, I had your back and even if you didn’t ask me I would catch the alliance culprits just on principle.
Heck I got a lot of respect even from alliance players in those days putting my old AV twink (high warlord rogue leveling his way up from 60 to 69) up against their sometimes much higher geared chars, including people of my class that had literally double my health and weapons with DPH that far outclassed mine. Did anyone ever see me complain about them? No. What they did see however was me taking down a fair number of them as well, or trying to troll them and work around them when the situation required it. Sometimes even a corpse camp would ensue. They outgeared me?, well then I outplayed them. Or I died trying. And even that was fine. Lok-tar ogar!
In fact my fondest memory of my first twink was that one week the level 70 battlegrounds were bugged, and I ended up with my then 64 (so as a leveler, still in high warlord gear from lv60) being put in a full 70’s bg. Not only did I not mind, I came looking for it. People told me to /afk because I was dragging the team down (the exact opposite of telling higher leveled/geared players to leave) until I pounced on the first shaman confident enough to enter our half of EotS during the initial clash. They just left me to it thinking I’d die and leave so a stronger player could join. But instead I reveled in overcoming the gap in stats, in taking my time and making that shaman regret every decision that had led him to that point. It was at this moment that nathan knew… he f’d up. No tantrums about being weaker than him, no bs. Just skill, tactics and patience. And whenever I died… well then I died big whoop. That attitude is what it meant to be a pvp-oriented player. And I should note that I’m not saying this to brag, merely to point out what kind of situations drew me to pvp, and how that is vastly different from how some try to strawman twinks’ motivation and mindset.
People naturally ended up where they were comfortable with the skills and builds available to them, and in many cases it allowed them to sidestep the illusory progression. If we did better, and if we became stronger, that would mean that our faction in that bracket became stronger. Being a twink simply means doing what makes the most sense in a progression based game regardless of what bracket you’re in. Blizzard let the levelers who are just grinding through to max level into what was essentially our corner of WoW at the time (both twinks and other pvp entheusiasts that constantly passed through our brackets on their way up), and now some think that we should just gtfo to max lvl with the rest of them or quit. Seriously, there has to be a middle road we can find here.
Now for some honorary mentions:
Arleinaa<Perfect Losers>
People do BG’s for fast XP, rather than for the PvP. If there was no XP to be gained ( or the obscene amount of XP reduced ), which imo, makes for a conflict of interest between people who are there for the PvP and those who aren’t.
^ This. Never was the lack of exp as an incentive enough to not make our bg’s pop regularly. Never did our twinks actually chase away people who were into pvp and took it seriously. Whether they were going to twink or were just passing through. This was true for my 19’s, my 29’s, my 59’s and even my 69’s. Barely anybody had a problem with it. And that’s during a time when twinks were a lot more powerful in many brackets than they are now (especially with scaling dungeon drops being handed out like candies, and the ease with which you can acquire enchants and heirlooms).
Miylee<Sparkle Squad>
Since the proc items and on-use items were nerfed (with good reason, I’ll admit. Sul’thraze and Ramstein’s were insane) the main strength of twinks now comes from enchants and consumables.
Cheap enchants and consumables that I can use on a low level throw away character. I can still make a low level rogue, spend less than 1k on enchants and consumables and absolutely annihilate you. And who would be there to stop me? The better itemised twinks were taken away. And when that character levels up? I could just delete it and make another.
Preach! This solved next to nothing and just created a new issue. With the low twink population and poorly functioning queues we are pretty much screwed.
Goagrill<Pastilhocos>
I only dont understand since they segregated queues for twinks on leveling brackets, why twinking at 120 is still mixed?
^ And YOU get a cookie! And YOU get a cookie! O<(^_^)>O
Shadraeth<Spirit Odyssey>
(Note that I haven’t twinked since I did 69 twinking in wotlk, but considered starting again when the queues merged and with the removal of stat templates in 8.0)
I don’t like this change. Some of the most fun I’ve ever had was in lower level brackets. And then you level up and go into a completely different bracket altogether.
I liked the idea of turning exp off so you could “save” a character in the bracket. Of course this produced twinks. That is obvious. Getting the best gear at top level is not strange, nor is it here. I enjoyed saving the characters in legion. I enjoyed playing the bracket.
I simply do not enjoy level 120 content in general.
“Oh no, now I have to queue against other twinks” - I mean, I didn’t even twink, I just enjoyed the brackets. And I would be fine with this.
The trouble is the lack of participation. If there were ENOUGH twinks to fill a bg, it would be great. But there’s not.
So the change stinks.
It being also completely back-handed also reeks of deceit.
This is not a fun way of being forced to participate in max-level content. Make the max-level content good first, then we’ll talk.
^ Damn I’m running out of cookies. x’D
Yes this is 100% true.
Punyelf<Rewind>
"This pretty much ^^Blue post regarding separate queues"
Well first of all there isn’t really that many twinks compared to people leveling. Secondly I just looked at your 120 paladin with ilvl 416; when I get 120 and want to get gear by doing PvP how much fun do you think I’ll have? 70k hp and crappy dmg vs a 226k hp and crazy dmg fully geared paladin? Probably not as much fun as you, BUT that’s life and I would GLADLY get owned in BGs by some fully geared players because I know they have put in a lot more work than I have (which is exactly the same as with twinks).
^ Exactly. Same crap, different bracket.
Kaizem<The Kingdom Hearts>
"This. Crying about twinks not being able to have fun is ironic."It isn’t ironic at all. Arleinaa has posted two links to two characters; one twinked and one in levelling gear. There’s virtually no power difference between them.
Twinks aren’t some magic wrecking ball that plow through entire teams any more. The only bracket where one twink can alter the entire game is at 110, and that is a problem with power scaling when jumping to the latest expansion.
Twinks in every other bracket got hit by the “proc item” nerf; so you don’t see any “Ramstein’s Lightning Bolt crits you for 3500” any more, and you don’t see 1.8k Sul’thraze procs.
I guess some won’t be happy until battlegrounds cater entirely to the lowest common denominator, in this context meaning underleveled and undergeared players. If you keep your gear up to date twinks really aren’t an issue aside from select few brackets where problems like the ones you mentioned rear their heads. And that is something that can (and should) be addressed, but destroying our queues does not accomplish that. It’s fighting a symptom, not the root cause.
Lipsanos<TheBurningIce>
I don’t want to join the never ending treadmill at max lvl. In legion I was bis geared at lvl 110. But for what? Now it is no longer relevant, all that work for nothing.
I actually still have a WotLK seasonal PvP geared rogue lying around in the exact same condition. Some may enjoy being glued to the hamster wheel, but I just want off at this point.
https://www.wowhead.com/news=292345/island-freehold-twink-leveling-nerf-turning-xp-off-is-now-group-wide-in-patch-8-
"Starting in Patch 8.2, when someone turns their experience off, all members of their group will receive 95% reduced experience."Rather than fix the cause they are patching the solution people use to resolve their issues with the leveling process.
If that applies to all XP Off characters at all levels then I’ve effectively been cut out of PvE group content too, as soon people see who has their XP off it will be insta kick from the group. ( Twink boosting is not a thing below 110 btw.
If that’s true then they’re basically going ‘hulk smash’ at this point. x’D
![:smiley:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/smiley.png?v=6" ":smiley:")