Imagine for a moment, you are in the store with your child and they want a candy bar but havent done their chores at home, you let them know they can't have one, they start to get upset, you decline, they beg, you decline, they cry, you decline and stay strong, then... they start SCREAMING " I WANT A CANDY BAR!!!" everyone is now staring at you! You finally give in because honestly, you are about to smack them in public and get arrested for child abuse! The screaming stops as the candy bar is paid for.
Now imagine schools doing this for your child who doesn't wanna go through 12 years of medical schooling to get their degree and become a Doctor but yet they wanna be a brain surgeon!! "sorry but you have to goto school!.... I DONT WANNA GOTO SCHOOL!! I JUST WANNA BE A DOCTOR!!...... No, I'm sorry, you need to put in the time and learn!...... I DONT WANNA I DONT WANNA I DONT WANNA!!!!....... OMG fine, just shut up, here's your degree!!" Would anyone of you want that kid operating on your brain? Of course not! Kids need to learn the importance of work and reward in life or they are gonna have a really rough time and this game, in it's beginnings was a great lesson of just that, hard work would give just rewards and you could stand out above the rest, "oooh theres that guy with that mount, gear, title, etc." and you KNEW that he worked hard for it. Respect!
Now for some History. From my POV having never left the game and seen the changes first hand. (some of this is my personal opinion of why they did certain things) There are MANY things missing but to add them all would require writing 20,000+ word essay.
I would like to point out the history of Blizzards Catering service.
(Day 1 of BGs until end of WoTLK) no xp in BGs. Level 19,29,39 etc. twinks “ruining the game experience” 1 shotting undergeared players and suggestions of xp in bgs so PvPers could level doing what they love without having to do dungeons and raids and quests, ewww… LOTS of complaints on Blizzards desk…
(end of WoTLK) incorporated xp in bgs and separated xp on from off to protect the levelers. Xp-off bracket seen no queues so the original “death of Twinking” era began.
(Cataclysm) Level Imbalances of hit from a 10 to a 19 accounted for by squishing the brackets to 5 levels and Trial accounts unlocked from 10 day/ Level 20 to Permanant resident status with restrictions hence the birth of the 20-24 bracket Twinks.
(from Cata till WoD) Imbalances still called out by the community about level 24s being far more overpowered than Trial 20s so Character scaling and Gear scaling in Bgs implemented to balance. Also people complaining about Premades with too many healers on one side and none on the other… MANY MANY complaints on Blizzards desk.
(Day 1 WoD) Reset Brackets to 10 levels and Implemented Matchmaking in reg BGs. At one point you couldn’t even queue with 2 healers in your 5 man and 5 man queues were lowest in priority with solo queues getting many pops b4 premades when queued at the same time. Queue times immediately dropped from syncing 3 groups with near insta pops up to the last day of MoP to 40 min waits day one of WoD. To solve this Merc mode was implemented but to no avail for low level brackets as the npc only appeared for the faction that was experiencing long wait times and was decided by max level queues. Many complaints on Blizzard’s desk… Many broken items through the years fixed as found. Also 6.1 brought us Veteran account status which meant if you stopped paying for wow you could still play but as a f2p status [level 20 and below characters could still be played] with the starter account restrictions.
(Day 1 of Legion) To fix issues with Queues AND broken items at the same time, Xp-on and XP-off were merged into one bracket and Principles of War was implemented with Spec scaling. Every Spec had a stat template and was set to the max level Heirloom equivalent for each bracket. 20-29 scaled to 29 with IL 34. The only way to improve the stat template was getting 10% IL increase overall which was 150 individual IL total. That gave you a 1% increase in stats. All set bonuses, gems, enchants, Engineering items and even most foods got disabled in BGs. Arathi Basin Field Rations that can ONLY be used in AB weren’t usable in AB! It was a clean sweep across the board for regular BGs, even TOYS weren’t usable, which caused a major stir in the whole PvP community and Blizzard re-added a few things like Noggenfogger Elixir. To say the least, this was round 2 of “the death of Twinking” and skill ruled the day as no advantages were found for the less skilled players and believe it or not, in low levels, WHITE Items gave the highest IL and were technically BiS as they gave Principles of War stat increases. People were running to the vendors for their [The Rock] rings and so on. This was all done to cater to the flood of complaints about unfair advantages in PvP by people who took the time to get the best gear, chants, items, professions etc…
(day 1 of BFA) Principles of war templates were removed, chants, gems and items were restored and the brackets remained merged! Was the first “Rebirth of Twinking” WE WERE BACK BABY!!! ALL Brackets were playable again as Twinks…MANY MANY MANY complaints dropped onto the desks again so… 8 Months into BFA, BAM xp-off and xp-on were once again separated without notice and the Trial/ Veteran accounts were removed from the xp-off bracket to be merged with the leveling xp-on 20-29s in an attempt to protect them from the level 29 Twinks so they didn’t have a bad experience trying out the game for the first time.
This continued until recently and let me explain something and hopefully it will be understood…
The INTENTION was to protect the trial and vet accounts from “Twinks”. Well, what people were doing was locking their toons at lvl 20, collecting the best gear they could, Gemmed gear from TBC, IL 28 gear from Legion greens with sockets and extra stats, the BEST gear out there for level 20, gem it, enchant it and some had grandfathered gear that was nutty good, and then turning on xp and letting their account expire to get the vet status so they could circumvent the systems separation of xp-on and xp-off to play in a xp-on bracket while NEVER gaining xp as a fully BiS Twink.The queues for xp-off dropped off as soon as they reseparated xp and moved the vets/trials to xp on.
So, Blizzard catered to the people who were complaining over and over until finally the trials and vets were exactly where they wanted to be, on top of the world!! It was a GREAT time for them as they were 1-shotting levelers coming through the bracket. NO ONE could even try and compete with a Twink vet in BiS gear except another twink or group of them.
THIS WAS NOT INTENDED BY BLIZZARD for their poor little trials and vets they were protecting, to become THE ones that were DECIMATING their paying levelers!! .....
LOTS MORE COMPLAINTS on the desks! This time by their paid community of levelers.
Finally, years later they realized they have swayed so far from the work and reward system they started with this wonderful game, by catering to the complaints, that it was hardly recognizable by the founding fathers and mothers of WoW. They decided the final decision was to set things back and to let the complainers know “This is the way it is!!”. There are other games you can play if you don’t like what we have made.
@Veteran accounts, no reason to be salty, do as you told me to do and adapt. I am absolutely in stitches LMFAO reading some of the Vet account Twinks responses to this.
Don’t let them fool you @Blizzard forum community, some of these guys have spent MILLIONS and MILLIONS of gold on their toons to become the top dogs they are and THAT is the real reason they are acting a fool over this.
Man up buttercup, this is a BATTLEground, not a PLAYground, the sandbox is in the other games. You had your moment , a LONG moment, and you are still WAY overpowered so relax and stop showing your fake “poor me” face and stop using the “new players experience will be destroyed” tactic to try and manipulate Blizzards decision, shame on you!
KUDOS @Blizzard ! Honestly, the only ones to blame are those of us that did NOT send complaints to the desks! See, when changes happened that we didn't think would happen, we were dumbfounded but believed they would realize it wasn't good and revert it, eventually, so we didn't complain. We had a faith in the WoW we loved, surely it won't stay like this.
Blizzard was responding to what they thought the community wanted by what they were seeing for feedback. Well, the feedback was coming from the people that didn't want to work hard for their rightful place on top, they wanted it handed to them and that is what they got.... because Blizzard didn't hear from us in the numbers they should have, we were silent mostly, so how could they know?
That is why it is so important for EVERYONE to submit their feedback to their likes and suggestions for changes!
This is my humble opinion and ONLY my humble opinion and like it or hate it, that’s your right and I respect that! <3 Suffer well brothers and sisters! See you in the games.
Somfas
… On a side note, the xp-on games are much more enjoyable now when I’m leveling a new toon through BGs. The games are intense. You never know what mix you will get… novice players trying PVP for the first time, or 2300 rated arena players leveling their next 60! Again, @Blizzard, Kudos for standing strong. Respect! <3 … P.S.S. the queue times seem to have improved on both sides of the Experience.