PVP from a twink players perspective, & my solution to fixing it

PVP Battlegrounds
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After a brief reading through the official Warcraft PVP forums, I’ve noticed that a popular discussion being had, is the twink bracket merge/separation. I’d like to address my feelings on this issue, and hopefully my contrasting opinion will have some light shed on it.

But, before I move any further, I would like to introduce myself appropriately. I go by Jwl, and have a collective total of 81 twinks, divided between my 2 accounts. Some characters ran me as low as 20,000g, others over 1,000,000 gold. I take twinking very seriously, and have been doing it for about 13 years now. I consider myself a very credible & relevant voice for the XPOFF community.
Lets get started.

Just like the majority of you, I enjoy to level through PVP. Its fun, can be fast-paced, and is a great way to make friends. But spending 10-20 minutes for a battleground pop, only to get destroyed by a twink premade…its miserable. It leads to /AFKs (which discourage players from requeuing) and provokes even slower queue times with the 15 minute deserter debuff. In a matter of speaking, it truly does ruin the game, and that is my nonbiased opinion.

However, I really dont think any of the suggestions that I have been reading, are the appropriate way to address this problem. Whether you guys want to admit it or not, twinking is a feature that sets Warcraft apart from the modern MMO genre. Its creative, innovative, and something to do when you are bored with level cap.

Allow me to respond to some of the suggested ideas that I have recently encountered:

“Just remove the experience disable feature! Nobody twinks anyways”

Believe it or not, the twink player-base is quite alive and well. We have an official website that is viewed by thousands of users on a daily basis, and we are growing by the day.
We hold annual tournaments, weekly wargames, and spontaneous events whenever we feel the urge to amp things up. Destroying our community by disabling the experience toggle feature is a guaranteed way to lose my subscription, and is an insult to someone like me who has contributed so much to this playstyle. It may be a troll gimmick to you guys, but I’ve put too much time & effort into this to sit idly by and watch it get destroyed.

“Just nerf everything to the ground, so they cant abuse overpowered items”

I am going to be completely honest here. From a business perspective, this is a horrible idea. Do you guys want to know how many WOW tokens I have purchased with intentions to buy either overpowered or unobtainable items from the Auction House? Hundreds of dollars worth. Do I believe some items should be as overpowered as they are? Of course not. But there should be an incentive to obtain sought-after items for more than their transmog.

Both of the ideas that I have presented are horrible solutions economically, and ultimately, neither of them will do any good, as there will always be ways to exploit any video games mechanics, and that’s the inevitable truth.

Now, let me propose my thoughts on how to make the PVP-leveling experience (and, twink experience) better for everyone.

Divide the brackets
There is a reason this is being suggested so much blizzard, its honestly such a simple fix. I can guarantee that you’ve merged the brackets with intentions of speeding up queue times, but I am almost positive there are levelers out there completely discouraged from queueing up because they already know twinks are preying upon them.
As a twink player, I love competition - the fact there are twinks out there who spend 30 minutes in BG queues (in groups of 5* mind you) to stomp levelers for 3 minutes just amazes me. Its no fun whatsoever. I want my community to be taken seriously. I want my community to be competitive. There truly is no enjoyment in fighting players who cant defend themselves & there is a reason I WPVP and try to take on that 117 with my level 59. I prefer the challenge. I dont even care if a separation weeds out twink players, I want the serious players to stay, and the casuals to go.
Please separate the brackets. Dont fill empty slots with BOTs either, you and I both know your game is populated enough for 10v10 battlegrounds. Your consumers are just hiding.

This is my opinion on the subject. I apologize if this is not thoroughly drawn together, but these are my thoughts, and I hope they are to be considered. Of course there will never be a perfect solution, but for the time being, I strongly believe separate brackets are the right answer.

Cheers, from Michigan. - Jwl

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A very well thought-out post and full of great information. It appears that the consensus of players in this forum agree with this.

EDIT: I do honestly wish more were this honest.

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I’d also like to point out, that our community knows each other. And I have destroyed fully geared twinks on my levelers. It is not impossible.

You guys would be astonished by what either being skilled at the game, or purchasing a few enchants can do. But that is asides the point. I understand your perspective, and hope blizzard comes up with a win-win solution.

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Careful with your reasonable stance around here. If you’ve dove into any of the messes that are the larger threads about twinking, you’ll see anyone who isn’t pro farming levelers is quickly called an alt, insulted, or likely in your case they’ll claim you aren’t a real twink.

It’s a strange thing to see.

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My queue times so far average 10 minutes. A couple times went to 20. But that’s more a Horde problem than anything.

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Thank you. I just want whats best for everyone. We are our own community, and we do invest just as much time into low level PVP than you guys do endgame.

I’ve got recorded gameplay of me doing ICC10 in a group of 70s, streamed PVP of my level 80s killing 120s…Screenshots of my friends & I just doing what we love most. I dont want Blizzard to take away our memories, and I believe I proposed the smartest way to resolve our problem.

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I mentioned this in another thread. I read posts where people who were not the typical supporters you see in these threads regularly who give twinks such a bad name, were discussing how they preferred their own queues because it was like Cheers… you knew everybody.

They honestly do not think this. They bring it up as a defense mechanism when there is no valuable response to be had. They believe it upsets the people they say it to, but it just makes them look all the more silly.

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I think the most reasonable decision for them would be to remove new players (white gear) into their own bracket. Anyone with heirlooms on or questing/dungeon gear can put up a really good fight.

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I have more twinks than anyone on US or EU servers. More grandfathered twinks, & more quality twinks than anyone in the game. Anyone who’d like to take that title away from me, is more than welcome to.

I say this all the time, “I am not a twink player, I am a collector”
With that said, throw your insults at me, or call me an alt. Just know my alts may have cost more gold than your 120s. I really dont expect anyone to hurl their insults, but I welcome it.

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if they separate the ques again be prepared for those 40 minute ques to jump up to 2-3 hours in most brackets ( 19s and 29s will be fine though)

Wargames are lots of fun I use to participate in the forum wargames during mop and wod, the issue with them is people get their feeling hurt when they lose and the games stop. I am not sure the twink community would not have this happen to them as well. Maybe I am just not optimistic enough though based on previous experiences.

Also why not just have it so you can not que premades with xp turned off? just a side thought and I know I will get some flak for that suggestion.

I would rather see a move back to wods scalling system where every piece of gear scales up to top of the bracket. back then while leveling I had a pvp set finished by lvl 30 and could just spam que bgs to max lvl. I really liked that system I wish we kept it.

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Are these in the higher brackets? As of level 42, my queue times have been rather short.

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I like your suggestion. Separating queues doesn’t address the real problems of broken specs and gear. If they work on balancing those things, everyone gets to play rather than the same issues being there but a portion of players get locked behind long or endless queues.

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The queues would only be 40 minutes if the “soft twinks” lose interest because they cant keep up with competitive atmospheres. And that’s a good thing. I want those players weeded out of my community. 59 twinking has been active for almost a year now, and it went from having no interest whatsoever, to 10-30 players online (on horde) during peak hours. There is no reason we should have slow queues. We have our forums to organize events, and in-game communities to communicate with each other. I am willing to sacrifice boring, rigged games that commonly occur for competitive, stream-worthy games that I’d actually enjoy.

Removing premades is the exact opposite of what we need. it encourages people to play an MMO BY THEMSELVES. And WOD scaling was horrible. I can already see the potential gear exploits and theory craft inc.

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Again, what bracket is this? I’ve had tons of competitive games, more so than landslides up to level 42. I’m not a twink, just an heirloom leveler like most.

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19s and 29s would do fine.
The rest would suffer queue times 100%, brackets will diminish.
Players will return to FOTM rerolling through the brackets, as documented in previous expansions.
Players just want to log on, queue up. No need for organizing wargames or calendar dates.

Balance is an accessible option with this new system in place IMO.
Blizzard has made more changes which solely effect the lower brackets for BFA than ever before. The attention to balance is obvious.

Focusing specifically on what we need to see changed will lead to much better results than a heavy handed cudgel effect of “separation” IMO.

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Good post. They need to separate the brackets ASAP.

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Then heirloom players will just take over as I showed in my last SS

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Steamrolled games happen in every bracket. I personally play every bracket out there and will confirm that a group of twinks will blow you out the water.

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They wouldn’t. Your screenshot proves nothing. In fact this response is so absurd you should be reported for trolling.

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Sure that warrior steamrolling everyone in just heirloom gear shows nothing. We still won since he never went after the EFC though

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