I’ve spent the last seven years or so playing on WOTLK private servers. Mainly at level 80, but I’ve also enjoyed the 79 twink scene which was active on every private server. I like the 79 bracket because you get almost all of your class’ abilities, but, at the same time, the gearing process is vastly easier than at level 80.
There’s already a thread on how Classic WOTLK arena isn’t appealing to the casual pvper, so I won’t repeat the points on that issue since they are pretty obvious.
What I do want to do in this thread is to point out that the Classic devs made a very important decision which, if they don’t revert it, means that the 71-79 bracket in WOTLK Classic can be very fun and easily accessible even to casual pvp’ers with a lot of IRL responsibilities.
The decision I’m referring to is the devs’ decision to put Brutal Gladiator gear vendors in Stormwind and Orgrimmar, where anyone 70 or higher can buy season 4 pvp gear at a very reasonable honor price. That didn’t happen on any private servers, so it was sadly the case on private servers that zero resilience levelers in the bracket got farmed in bgs by twinks.
As it currently stands on Classic, however, any level 71, even one with boosted 70 gear, can start doing Wintergrasp, where he will basically be guaranteed a new piece of Brutal Gladiator gear after every bg. So literally any level 71 can be full Brutal within a few days, if he so chooses.
A level 71 in full Brutal gear is very much competitive against even 79 twinks, as was repeatedly proven on private servers. In fact, some people think that a level 70 resto druid or disc priest is better than any 79 twink healer, due to the way resilience scales with level.
Regardless of whether that’s true or not, it’s clear that anyone who wants to do casual WOTLK pvp only has to gear a leveled or boosted 71 in Wintergrasp and he can have a very competitive experience leveling through bgs. If that players decides he likes the bracket and wants to stay in it, he can stop his XP at 79 or any other level (some twinks stop at 70 or 75).
Now, my long history of disappointment with Blizzard devs since Warlords of Draenor leads me to worry that this current situation will set off their fun detectors and they will decide to put an end to it. But there’s no good reason for them to do so, since a bracket where both twinks and levelers have a fighting chance is what devs should aspire to. Just wanted to point out in this thread that, for now at least, the bracket has all the design features necessary to be a very fun and competitive scene for casual pvpers. So if you enjoy WOTLK pvp but (understandably) dislike the level 80 gearing process, this is one option you may want to consider.