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