I would say most players did not care about scaling as it did not effect them in the slightest, the big problem was gearing was tedious and outright trash on top of very poorly implemented scaling. I know I was pretty annoyed when I found out about a few things thanks to video’s but most of the friends I had who did casual PvP could not care less. I think people forget most PvPers just want to do random BG’s and not deal with all the annoying stuff forced on them. Most of the low/mid end arena players are just people trying to get gear for BG’s or PvE.
I would argue it’s also not twinking, in games twinking is when you gear like that on low level characters perfecting. With max levels we call it min maxing if it’s something special or just getting geared when the system is like WoD, BFA, SL, DF and others when you for the most part just need to get your PvP set and then maybe a OP trinket or legendary from PvE.
If you google the word it tells you that and in Souls and every other gaming community with gearing systems you can take advantage of that’s what it’s called and used to define.
Again it’s not something you can say for others, (talking about the feel of power progression in PvP. I think it’s known people hate how Blizzard added templates and scaling. Those same players loved it in other games like Lost Ark where they added it properly.), it’s a personal thing for you, the vast majority of people on these forums going by posts over the last few years, and elsewhere with WoW communities prefer the DF system without the power progression that ruins the PvP side of the game. We have seen that time and time again with many threads and people complaining. A little power progression is fine, and can be fun but it’s not the main focus unless you just use PvP to gear quickly for PvE, people like that don’t matter and Blizz clearly has not wanted that to be a thing as we have seen with their decisions these last few expansions.
Yes there where big, like real big problems with templates and scaling but the idea behind it was not bad, just how Blizz implemented it as we have seen with PvP in other games. All they had to do for PvP was give us a simple vendor gearing system like with DF and past expansions without annoying restrictions and long grinds so people could get into PvP quickly. They should have had crafted PvP sets like what we are getting with DF so alts and new players can jump right into BG’s at max level. Something like WoD where players with absolute trash item level get scaled up are also good for the game but is not needed with crafted sets.
Going on topic, I never said how I feel about twinking.
I enjoyed it in vanilla when I played, all I did back then was lvl 19, then later lvl 29 PvP. I was not a twink myself but was the best non twink player in the 19 bracket on my server at the time and was forced to contest them to help my team, alliance had two twinks (two NE rogues.), on the server that would join from time to time pretty rarely and Horde had a warrior that played every weekend the same time I could play and a Hunter that was not seen as often. It was fun playing around them even though they where annoying at times with how OP they where. I was a rogue and would hold off the enemy warrior alone most of the time with CC, fighting him then resetting then starting that over again. I would actively recruit mages I seen in SW to join up just to CC spam the guy so I could solo flag run as I was able to kill anyone else 1v1 or 1v2 because of the skill + rogue gap with only a couple of more skilled players who stopped by while leveling around the same strength. When there where only one or two around it was not the worst experience and could be fun, less so when it was a rogue or hunter.
In the modern game, they just ruin low level PvP when they join the leveling brackets. There are just too many of them and low level PvP has been broken for so long with classes that are not even twinked one shotting people, when they twink it just gets worse and killed off leveling through BG’s for me and many others. I know I leveled so many characters to max level with just PvP in the past before things got bad. I would level a character through PvP, delete them at max level and then start over.
It’s fine in their exp off bracket but it forces people out of PvP in the leveling BG’s. All I used to do in WoW till BFA was BG’s while leveling or at max level, in the current game low level PvP is just trash so I can’t do that and max level PvP is just no fun with the gear and other issues throughout BFA and SL.
I don’t hate the idea of twinking, it just becomes a huge problem when they are too powerful over normal players, and playing broken classes that really need to be nerfed in low level PvP. I think the bigger problem is just how low level PvP is set up and it’s bad in it’s current state.