New twinking exploit, proposed simple fix included

Given that Blizzard has signaled their desire to remove twinks from low level battlegrounds to improve the pvp experience, I thought I’d bring attention to a new exploit people are using to enter low level BGs with the xp-off debuff.

Basically, you que for a battleground on your twink, while you have another toon with their xp-turned off sitting in a dungeon. When the BG que pops, your xp-off toon invites your twink to group, twink enters dungeon to get debuff and then takes the BG que. Viola, xp-off twink in xp-on ques. Granted yes, its only a 95% xp elimination but if you were to start at say 17 or 18 instead of 19, thats hundreds and hundreds of games before you level out. Obviously undermines the intent behind Blizzards game design.

As this exploit becomes more popular and Shadowlands approaches, I think its imperative to get it fixed because the power disparity between levels will be so much more apparent after the squish. A level 10 player against a level 19 player in Shadowlands would be like a level 20 player against a level 39-ish player today.

Im not one to complain without bringing solutions so I have a handful of proposed approaches Blizzard could take.

My first and less ideal solution is that the game runs a periodic check for the xp-off debuff from the moment the BG starts and simply /afks anyone with it. But these are creative folks. They’ll probably find yet another workaround.

A second idea would be that once you join a group, it drops all your ques even if they’ve already popped and are just waiting on you to accept them.

My third and much better, more comprehensive solution (and one I think is long overdue and would be appropriate in Shadowlands) is to simply remove the ability to turn off XP entirely. I understand why it was introduced and as someone who played twinks way back in Wrath and Cata, I enjoyed its presence. But these days, its causing Blizzard and players nothing but headaches. The feature is being used exclusively by people exploiting it to power level or people exploiting twinks into xp-on battlegrounds.

Just get rid of it. It’s outlived its usefulness. That way you don’t have to worry about this continued exploit arms race. Just nuke it from orbit, its the only way to be sure.

There arent any real twinking communities left in retail anyway. Most of them went to classic and those that are left are gonna watch their toons and their brackets get wrecked in the level squish anyway. It’s a perfect time to remove a tool that made sense a decade ago but no longer does anything but serve as an avenue of exploitation.

20 Likes

As someone who has spent a lot of time leveling characters through PvP, I really hope this gets fixed. It ruins the fun and viability of PvP leveling when games are imbalanced due to twinks exploiting in to leveling battlegrounds.

11 Likes

A better idea, remove XP from BG’s.

25 Likes

Who cares they barely balance max lvl and blizzards focus should be on SL anyway

6 Likes

If this isn’t fixed by Shadowlands there is a good possibility that the power gap between twinks and levelers increases even more.

2 Likes

The only reason twinking has been so popular this expansion was the fact BFA has been exteremly bad. Plus once shadowlands is out i guarantee you for a good solid time people will be more focused on shadowlands then low lvl of course i dont defend exploiters nor do i do it myself i just would rather blizz actually focus on making pvp actually good at max lvl for once

2 Likes

I cant imagine it takes too much energy to just nuke two NPCs and call it good.

If they removed the ability to turn exp off, and I didn’t like vets/50s or they removed that too I would just quit the game straight out. Plenty of people like twinking and it would be a mistake for Blizzard to remove it outright. I’ve done the gear treadmill plenty of times in two expansions, and I have no plans on doing it again. Max level is almost always the same in the regard that you will never have enough gear only for all your progress to be reset fairly quickly, and that is not for me.

i mean how many threads do you see about mages and locks in both pvp forums and yet nothing has been done still… theres your answer.

1 Like

Merge queues, normalize all lowbie BGs to the same ilvl. Disable some items if necessary.

5 Likes

they tried something very similar in Legion and everyone hated it. Besides, that seems like a lot of work when just removing a couple NPCs and a buff does a better job of fixing the problem.

1 Like

Sounds like there is a very good opportunity for engagement, in regards to Twinking activities being correctly promoted from Blizzard.
Once again, players are demonstrating the want/desire to play custom built lower level characters.

4 Likes

Have you posted this in the bug report forum?

2 Likes

I was just headed there! thank you.

2 Likes

people that twink will find an exploit thats the kind of people they are

6 Likes

darn thats a flowery way of saying “I want my gear to win for me because otherwise I’d lose”

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this is why, if you dont want twinks in low level BGs, you remove one avenue of exploiting

2 Likes

That is not a very nice thing to say, why generalize?

Sorry to hear that, I have seen some really well built Prot pallys do well.

1 Like

Do you run around in subpar gear at 120?

4 Likes

its reduced xp so technically im leveling. also you explained how to do it wrong.

1 Like