Why Do You Twink?

Ehawther

Legend
I am a university student, and one of my classes is about studying video games. Naturally, I chose WoW as the game I will be studying closely, and I have an upcoming project looking at twinking as an example of emergent game play, which is to say that twinking is a player created form of playing WoW. In other words, it is not the "typical" path that Blizzard would have us, as players, follow in order to progress through the game.



For this project I want to get some testimonials from the twinking community regarding some simple questions:



  • How long have you played WoW?
  • How long have you been twinking?
  • How many matches do you play in a week? (average)
  • What is your favorite bracket?
  • Why do you twink?
  • An Armory link to your favorite/best twink. (It would be nice to see a variety of levels from 1-79)



Please make your response as long or as short as you want and don't feel constrained by any reasons that you think may be overly specific or far to general. Also try to keep things constructive because responses like "Alliance r fagz. I pwn them!!1!one" does nothing good for my research. Similarly, using proper English (or as close as you can get) in your responses would make my life much easier so I can take direct quotes from your post.



As my project is based on the current version of WoW (Cataclysm) please do not post about how sweet twinking was in Vanilla. While some history is nice, for this thread, I would like to stick to responses that are based on current players and current twinks.



Finally, by responding to this thread you are giving me permission to use your words (which will be quoted accurately and referenced through this thread) for the purposes of my assignment. I will use this information for this assignment alone. Please do not provide your real name or any other personal details, as your forum handle and Armory links will be sufficient to ensure that proper credit is given to those who deserve it.



I will post an example of what I would like to generally see based on my own experience.
 
How long have you played WoW?

I have played WoW since release.



How long have you been twinking?

I started twinking 6 months after the release of Burning Crusade.



How many matches do you play in a week?

I usually play 10 matches a week.



What is your favorite bracket?

49’s



Why do you twink?

I started twinking to give myself a break from raiding. I enjoyed PvP, but was frustrated by the stat of level 70 pvp requiring such a huge time commitment in order to earn the necessary resilience gear to even be viable, never mind competitive. I had an abundance of money and some un-finished characters, so I decided to buy them some rare and epic gear and call them “twinks.” From that point on I have only become more involved in twinking.



An Armory link to your favorite/best twink.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/medivh/coldskin/advanced
 
How long have you played WoW?

Since mid vanilla.



How long have you been twinking?

My first proper twink was made early BC, but I had an ungeared low level I PvPed on more than I leveled earlier in my wow career in vanilla.



How many matches do you play in a week?

None, I have quit for the now. I won't be returning until balance is fixed.



What is your favorite bracket?

19s



Why do you twink?

I started twinking because leveling became a chore to me. I have never been a fan of questing or progression for the sake of progression so leveling myself a main was neveer something I was particularly interested in. I had tried the whole main thing in vanilla and found that it wasn't for me. Part of this reason was, as i mentioned, that I couyldnt be bothered to level a main and gear it and partly because I didnt have the time to commit to keeping a main.



Now, or at least most recently, I twink because it is what I have done in WoW for years. I like to think of myself as a part of the community and as well as enjoying the PvP I enjoy playing with players I have known for a while and those I have not kknown so long who are interested in that same part of the game as myself. I still don't like endgame either :)



An Armory link to your favorite/best twink.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/draenor/korette/
 
How long have you played WoW?

Since early/mid TBC



How long have you been twinking?

For about 9 months



How many matches do you play in a week?

I can't make a good answer on this as i only play on my lvl 1 twink. I do what I feel for, one day i might duel a lot in goldshire and then I might go for some achivement points the day after. I also pve VS elites and gank lowbies around razor hill and I plan events for the guild ofc ^^. It's very mixed.



What is your favorite bracket?

Level 1



Why do you twink?

I'm a slow leveler so i didn't reach max level untill early/mid WotLK. Raiding isn't something i like and end-game in generall required to much time to get the good gear compared to the time you could fully utilise it. Having quite good gear from only doing HC's i got bored of end-game and though of something else to do.

I remebered that my friend had a level 1 twink long ago so I decided to try it out, did some research and made Djaeb some weeks later.



Level 1 was the thing for me. Simply the feeling you get knowing that you can beat players 15 times higher level without much problems was enough.

I found some others with level 1 twinks and Delvai made the guild <CBA to Level>. He didn't play much on his twink so I was some kind of leader for the guild, asked him to promo me to officer and later to guild master. Now it's my guild and we start to close in on the leading guilds, having events regularly.

Twinking is now more of a project to me, always trying to perfect Djaeb and the guild, aiming for fame and glory ^^.

I could never achive anything as good as this in end-game. I see Djaeb as my main and my only 85 as Djaeb's sponsor.



An Armory link to your favorite/best twink.

Level 1s don't show on the armory :(

I have around 25 pieces of gear that I use in different situations, hardly anything left to improve.

I will try to get magelo and I will edit it into this post later to show my gear.



Ps. Kore your link don't work, it just says "Oops, Character Not Available".
 
Djaeb said:
Ps. Kore your link don't work, it just says "Oops, Character Not Available".
Click to expand...



Might be because I haven't bought subs for over a month now. I thought it was 3 months before characters stopped showing on the armoury, but apparently I'm wrong. Anyway, it's my level 19 druid twink. Probably currently resto specced.
 
First of all I would like to say, what an awesome uni project and I wish you all the best.



How long have you played WoW?

Since The The Burning Crusade



How long have you been twinking?

Months after I got the game, as soon as it was possible to earn some in game money to fund my twink.



How many matches do you play in a week?

As many as possible, I am trying to earn the 100k hks achievement so i just queue as much as I can, but if I had to give you a number I would say about 10 a weekday. and more on the weekends.



Why do you twink?

I think the reason as to why I twink has changed and developed as the concept of twinking is changed purposely, or antecedently by game developers. Originality my best friend played wow and he got me into playing the game. Days after getting the game, my mate shows me a funny loophole in the game called 'Twinking'.

At the beginning I thought it was fun to faceroll the newbies/normal levellers with semi twink gear.

I also enjoyed the challenge of getting the gear before you get dangerously close to levelling up to 20. And finding funny techniques to get the gear without gaining xp. I like doing things in games that are not fit for its original purpose. In the beginning it felt like you where pioneering into the unknown and stretching the game to its limits. I found this exiting and execrating.

Blizzard received many complaints from low lvl players about the unfair advantage that 'Twinks' have so blizz corrected this issue by allowing xp gain in battlegrounds. Buy blizzard gave us some mercy by giving us xp locked/ off battles, the only catch was that in removing our xp we could only fight in twink vs twink bgs.

This was a blow to my twinking experience as well as an enhancement, by about this time I was getting boord of beating up the normal players with ease and I wanted a challenge. With this new system we would get closer fights and more feace opponents, but that's if we would get any battlegrounds at all.

Twinks as a whole where spread out over many battlegroups and this made queueing for battles a endless queueing hell. However I was quite lucky I was in the 'blackout' battle group, which was the most active group on the eu severs, so sometimes we did have battles, and when the battles did come the quality of the team and opposition was soo good (as only the hardcore players would wait this long for a battle) the skill it took to win a match was very high. It became the quality of the matches not the quantity witch kept me playing as twink, and the stoke of luck that my battleground was the only active twinking community, if this was not the case i think that twinking would be dead to me even to this day.

These changes caused me to search about for some sort of forum organising times to queue for our few and far between battles, so i stumbled across twinkinfo.com and this began to give me the feeling of immersing fully into a niche community.

The new fix for me was to find any kind of edge against my opposition, with the battles being soo close. I would search endlessly after every patch trying to find a new overpowered, this is when my twink became fully geared, was because, this new concept of maxing and squeezing out every start from your gear and passive ability's like (herb/skin). This also allowed me and my friend to experiment with unconventional stat stacking. This led us to making his crit warrior. And then we came across this engineering scope that was bugged as it did not have a level requirement.this would basicly give the warrior 100% crit. The excitement of this discovery kept me buzzing for a few days, until it got patched. But it was fun to find the limits of the game and bend the rules to the limit. This is why I would never play on a private sever, as often there is no limits or restrictions, witch takes away the challenge of the game. As soon as new regulations come into place, you deal with them and xpliot them to them to the best of your ability.

This brings my twinking experience to the present day. After seeing the second expansion release in my game time. I get bored ad frustrated that you basicly have to start again after every expansion, where as my lvl 19 twink was always there minus some minor tweeks that need to be made some ware, my achievement of spending all that time getting gear remains on my twink and not on my main. So my playtime on my main basicly reaches zero after cataclysm arrives, and my twink becomes the main focus of the game.

Although in some ways I don't enjoy the current imbalance at level 19 atm, i do love the satisfaction and the challenge in beating other classes that are more powerful than my own.

As long as I find Twinking a challenge I will keep playing the game, but as soon as i am dissatisfied ill take my self out of the game



/endessay



this is my twink (oh the armoury is down, great. Just great) If you want to look at my twink search 'Fly''<queueing is the best bit> On the EU armoury.





why the hell am i righting this essay, I got my own uni report to do, jezz this has been the craziest procrastination session ever, writing about something that i spend too much time doing instead of studying ....lols
 
# How long have you played WoW?

Since the beta came out



# How long have you been twinking?

Since I learned how to make gold



# How many matches do you play in a week? (average)

Probably too many to count. I PvP on my twinks 3 days a week and when I am not PvPing, I am gearing them :)



# What is your favorite bracket?

39s



# Why do you twink?

It's better than endgame PvP/PvE/RP/Etc



# An Armory link to your favorite/best twink.

Scér @ Argent Dawn
 
Ehawther said:
using proper English (or as close as you can get)
Click to expand...

sorry >.<





# How long have you played WoW?

played beta, stopped durring tbc and started again late wotlk.



# How long have you been twinking?

started late vanilla.



# How many matches do you play in a week? (average)

zero, 49 EU is dead atm T_T

havent played xp off bracket a single time but i have been playing scrimishes while they were available.



# What is your favorite -twink- bracket?

49 - allways have been.



# Why do you twink?

first twink was a warr that i only started lvl'ing bcus i got [item]kang the decapitator[/item] cheap off the ah and i spent alot of time trying to get rare gear that was better than other ppl -more for the sake of showoff than having a huge advantege- and i simply got amased by the huge amount of gear that was obtainable bcus it wasnt end game, witch was the reason for me playing him so mutch and faling more and more in love with the 49 bracket´s pvp and that just made me play him more and more.

stopped twinking as i stopped with wow and the second i came back in wotlk i started thorycrafting manny chars and started gearing a Hpala cus of the potential i saw in it.

i cant wait till the time when 49´s are back on EU and i will stick to this toon untill i have played an retarded amount of pvp on her.



An Armory link to your favorite/best twink.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormscale/felicía/advanced
 
How long have you played WoW?

Since 2.3.



How long have you been twinking?

Starting in 2.4.



How many matches do you play in a week?

Maybe 20 matches weekly -- it varies greatly.



What is your favorite bracket?

If I had to choose, 49s, but I enjoy all brackets in which I play.



Why do you twink?

To be part of and promote a PvP community that takes its fun seriously, without taking itself seriously. I began my PvP experience as an "anti-twink", purposefully building the best healer I could in the 39 bracket to counter the battleground bullies who simply wanted to gank newbies. I had a lot of fun upsetting these "twinks" who could no longer steamroll battlegrounds. While googling more information about how to better gear my healer, I discovered the true twinker community via websites like pwndepot.com and twinkinfo.com, and participated ever since. I spend as much time evangelizing on forums and updating my website as I do playing in-game.



An Armory link to your favorite/best twink.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/windrunner/nirise/advanced



For your research, you might find Lawrence Lessig's work Code V.2 useful: http://codev2.cc/ specifically pages 121-137, which talk about different ways that "code" gets regulated in cyberspace. Some of the concepts here directly apply to how twinking works within the confines of WoW and Blizzard's rules.



And while were at it, Dr. Mia Consalvo's book Cheating contains discussion about how players perceive different boundaries in pushing the limits of what games can do. http://www.amazon.com/Cheating-Adva...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1301495047&sr=8-1
 
- How long have you played WoW?

Since Early Beta.



- How long have you been twinking?

My first twink was a 29 rogue a couple months after release.



How many matches do you play in a week? (average)

As of current, probably around 5. Before I started working, probably around 30.



What is your favorite bracket?

49



Why do you twink?

I used to do twinking, endgame raids and arenas/BG at once. However once I started running out of time to play the game, twinking was what I could always do because I didn't have to keep up with the gear treadmill. I didn't really get involved with encouraging and promoting twinking until Drayner picked me up for TI. In Cataclysm, I don't have a single 85 because of time constraints, and I pretty much stick strictly to twinking. The lack of gear treadmill as well as the ability to play solely with twinks is enjoyable over endgame.



- An Armory link to your favorite/best twink.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/azgalor/taitaih/simple <- my all time favorite



http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/azgalor/hiatiat/simple <- is my current best
 
How long have you played WoW?

Started early Vanilla.



How long have you been twinking?

Been playing PvE Endgame AQ40 + Naxxramas at first, leveling an alt and then discovered those first "twinks". Been stuck at 29 since. Tried out some other brackets but this one is still my favorite. More balanced than 19, but still not too high level since I discust leveling and regearing.



How many matches do you play in a week? (average)

29's EU have games Sunday & Thuesday. Trying to make those games up and running again. Being there as much as possible. Mostly around 10/week.



What is your favorite bracket?

29, by far. As stated above, 19's are way too imbalanced. Never cared going higher. After some time, I created a bound with fellow 29's, never to leave this bracket again. Now I'm trying to reastablish games and getting new people in, joining our community.



Why do you twink?

Started just being curious, after when bored on my main and not raiding, untill now, I'm only playing my twinks and leaving my main behind except for farming money or heirloom items. Twinking has a certain feeling, nothing else can compare too. Arena in TBC gave me some joy, but it was too time consuming to get to 2200 rating again each season. Twinking all the way.



An Armory link to your favorite/best twink.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/darkmoon-faire/mialo/simple



Greetings. I hope this brought you some more information. Are you going to upload it eventually?
 
Been twinking for 3 years.

I like it because you can work hard gear up and once your geared that's it. Just enjoy playing. No hours of farming no continually trying to keep up with newer beter gear. It takes to much time to keep your gear up to par on your main. By the time I can farm the top end gear newer beter pieces come out. With twinking I got best in slot gear and Maby once a year I have to make a change or two. All I have to do is the stuff I like, play.



Also ima 19 twinker but I prefer 29
 
How long have you played WoW?

November 2008, a few weeks after WotLK was released



How long have you been twinking?

March 2009, when i discovered how LoLRet could be



How many matches do you play in a week?

1-2 in the exp off 29s, around 5-7 amongst the 14/24/29 levelling brackets



What is your favorite bracket?

29s, originally because of no mounts in AB. exp-off 29s is the only official "twink" i have, the rest are BoA recyclers



Why do you twink?

less hectic than level cap endgame; gearing-wise. exp-off matches have a lot less of the stupid stuff happen: GY camping, emote bullying,etc



An Armory link to your favorite/best twink.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/terokkar/anthraxus/advanced
 
I'd love to help out :D



* How long have you played WoW?

Since near the end of Vanilla (on and off)

* How long have you been twinking?

Started a few months into BC

* How many matches do you play in a week? (average)

1-3

* What is your favorite bracket?

19

* Why do you twink?

I started twinking because I found it too much of a chore to level my (then main) Warlock and wanted to try something different - I'd heard about 'twinking' and so I thought I'd give it a shot. I enjoyed it immensely because I love the challenge of a 1v1 when you both have equal gear - it all comes down to skill, rather than the spamfest of skills end-game PvP is. I also love trying something different and new in a game when I get sick of normal progression.

* An Armory link to your favorite/best twink. (It would be nice to see a variety of levels from 1-79)

See signature
 
How long have you played WoW?

4 years



How long have you been twinking?

3.75 years



How many matches do you play in a week? (average)

50+



What is your favorite bracket?

19



Why do you twink?

To set the standard for other twinks in the bracket, guild and player wise.



An Armory link to your favorite/best twink.

Pìzza
 
•How long have you played WoW?

Since mid vanilla



•How long have you been twinking?

Since later vanilla



•How many matches do you play in a week? (average)

id say about 15



•What is your favorite bracket?

19s



•Why do you twink?

Its a different style of PvP that i like. I do end game pvp and endgame pve too, (mostly PvE).

but sometimes I just like a break, also this type fo BGing is more fun to me and is what Ive

been doing for years.



•An Armory link to your favorite/best twink.

All time favorite: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/perenolde/dutchman/simple ( old 19, nothing but a memory on my char list now :p)

Favorite to play now: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/perenolde/Ýáýó/simple (not done, and for some reason is naked in armory? ahah)
 
Thanks for all the responses, they look great! I will be posting my projects for everyone to see in a while once they are complete and I have submitted them. I will also try and put up the preliminary essay I did that broadly covers MMORPGs as a unique genre some time later today.



bwappo said:
And while were at it, Dr. Mia Consalvo's book Cheating contains discussion about how players perceive different boundaries in pushing the limits of what games can do. http://www.amazon.com/Cheating-Advan...1495047&sr=8-1
Click to expand...



I will look closely at this book - thanks for the suggestion. If you found this book interesting I would also suggest that you check out Jesper Juul's Half-Real.
 
been playing since early BC



started twinking my hunter in mid BC (not too great gear :p)



i don't queue often because there is a current OPness of hunters so i get ridiculed when i queue too often :(



favorite bracket WAS 19, will be again after class balance



i twink because it is fun and i hate end game content. loved it in BC, it was meh in wotlk, in cata they really dumbed it down



Awesome
 
i twink because Alliance r fagz.



LOKTAR OGAR
 
•How long have you played WoW?

I have been in wow since the release

•How long have you been twinking?

I have been Twinking since half classic

•How many matches do you play in a week? (average)

From the start up till the end of WotLK i played average about 100 - 200 (fulltime) matches wich has gone down after that in Cata to about 10 to 30 also due to all upgrades i have to do for my twinks, long/bugged queue times, achievs, class and specc changes, unbalance and all other characters i have made in wow

•What is your favorite bracket?

Well it used to be 10-19, thats 15-19 these days, 29 up till mounts in that bracket arrived and 60 cause of those awsome old AV's but sadly died and changed

•Why do you twink?

Its maby a strange story but i played classic on an old laptop wich just met the pc requierments for playing wow and the higher level i got the lesser quality the game gave. I played with 7fps my WSG's at 10-19 and you can immagine how that would be if it was in any higher bracket. I didnt start as a twink though but as a person who liked the bracket but due to twink progression i had to twink to stay competative and ofcourse to have something to do and discover. Never the less i played classic endgame and made a twink guild wich kept me ocupied alot and is still alive since the start of tbc with several original core members like Bedbug, Beastclaws, Nazgul, Kirifon, Sylvictus/Phonebook, Tabdot, myself and several people weve recruited from our old battlegroup were we also have our original made guild on Anachronos with some active players.

•An Armory link to your favorite/best twink. (It would be nice to see a variety of levels from 1-79)

Due to game changes and a super computer these days i leveld alot twinks from back i made in classic as mains and ive always liked hunters, priests and warlocks the most. I guess pet control is something i like very much and helping others to survive (specially undergeared players vs twinks back when we all played in the same battleground). I actually like all classes now anyway even though many are just silly these days to play. Ive twinked every class ingame more then once at 19.

One of my favo ones atm would be this one due to its high dodge: (Armory down, ill insert link later) And ofcourse my shadowspellpower warlock from back in the old days: (Armory dow, ill insert a link later) and my most played warlock: (Armory down, ill insert a link later), hunter: (Armory down, ill insert a link later) and my old priest: (Armory down, ill insert a link later). Sadly i leveld my old level 10 fc druid wich had 3,2k hp in its top days back in tbc and i got my ironman achiev in the first game.



Hope i helped you in someway with this and gave some info to others wich were wondering why im still twinking and ofc cause of the cool people ive met :)
 
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