Ive played this game for 13 years, incluing 10 chars (of which 9 to max AND all getting raid geared). Did a full year of nothing but bgs each and every day. And so on.
I know what im talking about.
It IS the same thing. You just dont want to see it.
If you stop XP at lets say 19, then you get into the 15-19 bracket.
If you go end lvl, you get into 60 bracket, or 55 - 60 bracket, depending on which expansion.
Now there is or can be a ‘small’ lvl difference.
As for gear it makes no difference. The stopped chars will increasingly have better gear, while the new ones there may have abysmal gear.
So in that respect it makes no difference. It may seem more equal now, in SOM, as most people are fresh 60 and have blue gear at best.
But give it a month or so and there will be people in full purple and there will also be people that dont have blues (or not many) but are in greens mostly. Same difference, as they will be close to one shot, same as twinks do to lvl ing chars that come new into a bracket.
I do not like how ppl talk down about twinks. You do not know their motivation and a general 'twinks dont like to play eachother bc they are bad players and cowards and what all else have you " is an interpretation you alledge. Bc you cannot say you actually KNOW.
There is no reason for such. As ive come to know twinkers at low lvl (most were at 19 or 29) is that they like the lesser options of low levels; less spells, making it more ‘pure’ in some sense.
Ofc there will be those that continuously enjoy one shotting new players, but well, i dont see the fun in that really. But there will be those. Being ‘godlike’ on the battle field is fun though. And you didnt even need to twink for that, or not during the period did bgs though, which was during cata. I was accused of being a ‘twink’ but i never did bgs with stopped xp. Well i tried once, but it took 3 years to get into a bg, so i gave up. Because at that time stopped XP had its own bg and que. It didnt seem to be popular, so i dont understand the entire discussion really, as this was solved a decade ago.
I was accused of being a twink, simply bc 1) i had chanted looms and 2) i did it SO much i knew exactly what to do with each class. So yes, my sub rogue did use to one shot people. Or, that is what they think happened, but it didnt happen.
Fact is, i waited to see who was at 50/60& health and then shadowstepped and finished them in a second, max 2, vanished and ran away. So to them it seemed they were one shot. They werent. Similar tricks in how to play frost mage, lock, pala, hunter, even warrior.
I did that in Ashran, (another period i did nothing but bgs daily)
What people think is often not what actually happened as for bgs. And thats bc most are not experienced pvp/bg players.
Back to this discussion. Im still ambivalent. I can see the problem wrt levelling players, maybe in greens, against twinks. But i also see the very same problem at end content.
Point is that the game never was balanced, nor do we want it to be. (ill gladly discuss where that leads to, as we are already there in retail, for a big part, with scaling. I dont think people are enjoying it as much as they thought they would, do they?)
I was one of those griefers back in time, feeling the power was fun but i admit it was a mistake to allow twinks in normal brackets.