Twinks, however, are going to become a much greater nuisance than they were before. Some of their old items are going to be upgraded by default as the new patch comes in and the old items all around the world get replaced with the new.
New twinks, however, will have the privilege of setting their sights on the best of the best items for their particular class and level bracket, putting an even further distance between them and other players who just want to enjoy a bit of PvP as they level up. This is particularly true with new low-level epics such as the Deadman's Hand which, at level 29, seems designed to be the pet dream of twinks everywhere, regardless of race or class.
Does Blizzard intend to support twinking? And what's the whole point of twinking anyway?
A friend of mine once encouraged me to make a twink once, one of a series of mage and priest quadruplets that would run around destroying everything in Warsong Gulch. We all had a lot of fun figuring out the best items and gearing up for our battles, and while it was nice to get a small taste for power rush those people running around battlegrounds with the very best epics at level 70 must feel, the greatest fun for me came when my friends and I worked together against other teams with their own twinks, who tried their best to win against us and gave us a run for our money.
I always felt a bit sorry in cases where the Horde players felt so frustrated that they would just hide somewhere with the Alliance flag and try to drag out the match as long as possible without even trying to win. It was as if they felt so powerless against us that they had to lash out and annoy us somehow in order to have some kind of revenge.
My mage and her sisters have since leveled up, and are no longer very involved in twinky behavior. The experience left me with a feeling that, while I understand people's desire to be as powerful as possible, it's still better for everyone if people settle for whatever gear they can reasonably get at their level, perhaps stay at the highest level for their bracket until their rested XP is full, and then move on to the next bracket, leaving new champions of the field to come along and take their place.
If the battleground matching system actually worked all the time to keep levelers fighting levelers and twinks fighting twinks, then I would have no problem with it, but as it is, the existence of twinks, and now their further improvement with patch 2.3 tends to prevent people from enjoying the lower-level battlegrounds as much as they could.
Nonetheless, it's clear from Blizzard's comments that they don't intend to get rid of twinking altogether. As Drysc says:
I think the biggest draw is that it's a unique challenge to build a character with a very specific constraint. You might find better balance or more simplistic enjoyment from limited abilities and talents. Finding the perfect item for a specific slot and figuring out how to get it while gaining the least amount of experience possible so as not to pass the level you're attempting to maintain. It's a different way to play the same game, and you can essentially reach the "most powerful your character can get" type of level without really needing to socialize.What do you think of twinks and the improvements they're getting in patch 2.3? Do you fear to ever enter the battlegrounds with an alt again, or do you find that twinks don't bother you as much as one might think?
There's obviously the sort of... I don't want to call it a god complex, but wanting to be powerful or invulnerable. I think as it's become more popular that's less of a draw, or maybe more of a deterrent at least, as you're more likely to face other twinks now than you may have before.
Some do legitimately like to face other twinks, it's similar to having premade characters, there's no real individuality of gear in most cases, and so it comes down to personal ability in playing the game. I don't think any of them would deny that they also enjoy killing a non-twink in a shot or two though.
It's a metagame of sorts, taking the rules and boundaries of the game and constricting them further to create a different and/or (usually) more challenging goal.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
10-28-2007 @ 2:29PM
TonyMotorola said...
The whole point of twinking is to find a way to continue playing the game when you're such a fucking talentless retard that you have to pick on lower leveled, under-geared players.
Can't hack it in the Arena because you're brain damaged? Twink. Can't raid because you're a fucking dullard? Twink. Can't BG because you're a witless twat? Twink.
That's the point of twinking, peroid.
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10-28-2007 @ 2:31PM
Lines said...
Right. They lash out to get their revenge by playing a turtle game. From your tone, I can tell you're one of the kids running around screaming that horde don't fight fair and allyz crush them lololol. I've seen my share of Ally turtle games, too, you know. We don't need your pity, becuase I'm certainly not giving you mine.
And on the subject of Twinking, no it's never bothered me. In fact, I loved quing up at *9 level and hearing the horde go zomg its (insert bamf ally twink here). It's kinda like a boss battle. Yea theres the cannon fodder, but you have to team up to take down the twink. It's fun stuff.
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10-28-2007 @ 2:41PM
Barky said...
Nooby Alliance.
Need twinks to win BG's.
Pretty much sums up the Alliance for me.
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10-28-2007 @ 2:46PM
Ghen said...
I like twinking, it keeps alot of epeen strokers at 19 so that they don't bother me.
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10-28-2007 @ 2:51PM
PeeWee said...
TonyMotorola:
For once, I agree with you 100%. Every word, every syllable, every frickin' letter in that post is truth. But you forgot to mention the epeen-factor involved in twinking. ^^
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10-28-2007 @ 3:11PM
bearskunk said...
diff in BG between epiced out 70 and twinked out 19 against average player? none.
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10-28-2007 @ 3:16PM
David Gevert said...
Sure is a lot of whining going on in here.
Let's see, end-game pvp is balanced around spending months getting gear, whereas anyone can make a twink. Twinking is actually more competitive because these days most people playing in low level BGs *are* twinked. And thats the fun of it, it's a fair fight when it's twink against twink.
And of course, some of the high level abilities (hell cloak of shadows!) are complete bullshit.
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10-28-2007 @ 3:18PM
Vellesta said...
I have known people in high end raiding guilds and decently rated arena teams, who are honestly really great players, that have twinks. It's not just something for poor players to do, regardless of how much you tell yourself that.
Twinking is way too boring and repetitive for me, personally. I have no problem with people that do it, though. The bitterness in these comments is pretty hilarious and the hostility towards people on opposing factions is so pathetic. Grow up people.
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10-28-2007 @ 3:19PM
Mask said...
@6
This is why I have a level 70 raid geared rogue, and a level 19 twink rogue. So I can pick on the poor noobs in both brackets!
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10-28-2007 @ 3:50PM
mateo said...
Seems to me that if the BG matching system worked properly, this wouldn't be an issue. It's annoying to jump into WSG and get pummeled by the opposition because they're a bunch of twinks... when the odds are even the battles are a hell of a lot more fun. Otherwise it's a gankfest and no one likes to be on the receiving end of one of those.
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10-28-2007 @ 3:55PM
TotalBiscuit said...
As per usual with discussions like this there's a whole bunch of crying with very little basis in actual fact.
A great many twinks are those who have already conquered the Level-70 PvP game. A great many ex-Marshall/Warlord team players, high-ranked arena gamers etc play twinks. It is also of course a very good PvP outlet for raiders who do not wish to pay through the nose for respec costs and have an entirely different set of gear to play what is little more than a tacked-on minigame that people take way too seriously for some reason or another.
PvP is largely meaningless before 70. If you're getting schooled by twinks then simply level past the bracket. You are not being prevented from doing anything remotely legitimate. If anything, those who are taking the 19, 29 and 39 brackets seriously and turning it into a new kind of metagame and community are the one's who have the right to dictate what goes on in those battlegrounds, not the casual leveler who goes into a BG at level 15 and realizes that 'hey, y'know, those guys with better gear and a lot more experience are tearing me apart, my solution to this problem is complain about it and demand that Blizzard destroys yet another part of the game for the benefit of those who can't handle competition'.
PvP is easy, it always has been. It's very much formulaic (so is raiding, don't get me wrong), rock/scissor/paper stuff. Punching hotkeys in the right order does not make you a skillful gamer. Arguing that twinks are those that can't handle Level 70 PvP is akin to arguing that those who play noughts and crosses can't handle the 3 dimensional version. It's still noughts and crosses, there are just more of them.
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10-28-2007 @ 4:03PM
syco said...
I'm going to have to call BS on that Blizzard. Twinks ruin lowlevel BG, you know it, and your attempt to fix it failed. If you have decided it's easier to embrace the jerks than to quarantine them, well, that's your prerogative. But the fact of the matter is that a person can't be competitive, REGARDLESS of skill, in any BG before 30-39 without investing nearly as much time and money producing a twink as it takes to get all the way up to 60 to begin with. All twinks are taking advantage of the system, cheating essentially, and they should be punished, not encouraged.
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10-28-2007 @ 4:20PM
Verit said...
I remember getting hit for like 900/1200 hitpoints per swing by some shaman twink on my hunter back in the day. Thats ridiculous and and hardly competitive.
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10-28-2007 @ 4:21PM
Coherent said...
TonyMotorola said it pretty well. Twinks get off on beating up other players in a massively unfair fight. He didn't say anything about horde or alliance, either.
Both sides do it. I used to play Horde pvp, and it was wonderful. We won all the time. At least 90% of the matches. I used to wonder why the Alliance players even bothered signing up. But of course sometimes there were alliance players that were simply unkillable.
Ridiculously powerful endgame enchants on everything they owned, completely unreasonable endgame items that Blizz had forgotten to level-restrict...
...Just like our own players! Yeah, Horde was even more twinked out than Alliance, which was why we always won. I mean, it feels good to win. But it was brutal the way we routinely cleaned up.
Horde just cares about PVP more than Alliance, so they twink like crazy.
Nowadays I play a Dranei shaman. I tried PVP... *shudder* It sucks so bad to lose endlessly. :( It wouldn't be so bad if Alliance could, say, win every third match or something. But no. Day after day goes by without victory.
Blizzard is being incredibly stupid by encouraging twinking. On an unbalanced battlegroup, for every Horde member who wins and feels validated, there is an Alliance player who says "This sucks. Why bother?" If things were more even, PVP would be more fun.
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10-28-2007 @ 4:24PM
Verit said...
Besides - I should add that going through dungeons will defeat the purpose of twinking rather quickly - especially with the increased exp.
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10-28-2007 @ 4:58PM
Akuma said...
Personally I love going against any bracket of twinks with my low level characters, all of which are in the middle of the brackets (except for 2 :-/) I routinely clean through the BG just because the twinks don't know anything about how to play their twinked class. I find it incredibly difficult AND fun to destroy a twinked rogue or warrior with a level 25 paladin or a level 23 mage. Of course when someone kills you it sucks. Usually, however, the match is decided by the teamwork of the two sides, not the twinks. (btw, I have 5 horde characters and 3 alliance all below level 40 - altaholic - and suprisingly it seems that the alliance wins now more then the horde, in the past 4 or 5 days we've been creamed by low level (25-28) groups with almost INSANE coordination, and I have to say I think it's wonderful cause the people who hate losing leave and the people who enjoy just being in a competitive game stay :-D. I guess my point is that if you just join up in low level BG's do it because you like the competition between the teams and the competition between the groups, not because you want a few marks for staying at the tunnel entrance or crowd camping the farm. :-)
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10-28-2007 @ 5:08PM
hpavc said...
This guy beats all the twinks with his normal toon. See, nothing to worry about.
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10-28-2007 @ 5:14PM
Chris Anthony said...
I maintain that when you leave a battleground, you should receive XP equal to the number of honor kills you got in the battleground. End the twinking problem entirely, but prevent PVP from being really viable as a leveling mechanism.
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10-28-2007 @ 5:25PM
MartinC said...
"Twinks, however, are going to become a much greater nuisance than they were before."
"Does Blizzard intend to support twinking?"
LOL, you really have no idea what you are talking about, do you? It really is not worth the time to go through the whole twinking explanation again, but yes, Blizzard supports twinking. They always have, and they always will. There was never any ambiguity there.
Twinks a nuisance? Hmm, I suppose level 70 players with Tier6 gear are also a "nuisance"? What should we do about them? WoW is about gearing and playing your character to the fullest. Twinking is really no different than trying to gear your character at any other level. I get so sick of people complaining about twinking. If you are getting beat by characters who have better gear and better skill, guess what, maybe you should try getting better gear and improving your skill. Ever think of that?
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10-28-2007 @ 5:45PM
Kaljin said...
I have never twinked. But twinking is fun I think because, yes, you find the best spec and gear, and fight against others who have it. It isn't bad or anything, but it can be frustrating for others. I believe it's fine.
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