Kirise
OG
Twinkers hate grinding. Ask any twinker how long it took to get a piece of gear that drops in a dungeon or raid, and a sigh, groan, or expletive typically precedes the response. The only thing worse than hoping for your gear to finally drop on a run, is waiting forever for a queue to pop. Part of the camaraderie and mutual respect of well-geared twinkers stems from understanding the suffering involved. Even if you dual-boxed or had a friend with a main take you through instances, you still persevered through the capriciousness of the RNG gods to get your gear.
The suffering can get especially acute in the lower and midbrackets. It can take longer to get the fishing hat for a 19 then it takes to get an entire gearset for a 70. Horror stories of 200, 300, and even 500 instance runs reside in the depths of TwinkInfo's forums. Some lower and midbracket twinkers wish their bracket had ready-made PvP sets and more gearing options. More players would join the bracket they love if gearing were easier. But while the quantity of games would increase, the quality would go down, if the popular brackets serve as any indicator.
Many characteristics distinguish XP-off brackets from each other, and one of the largest is the damage-to-health ratio. Different brackets bring different levels of burst damage. 29s have more survivability than 39s, who in turn live longer than the two seconds it takes to die in 49s. Burst helps determine the pacing of the bracket, and player preferences vary. But did you know that the damage-to-health ratio in the midbrackets matches the ratio in some upper brackets? Each bracket has its own nuances, of course. But the 70-74 bracket shares a similar damage-to-health ratio with 29s, 60-64 matches up with 39s, and 80-84 generally resembles the 49 bracket. At first blush, this sounds inaccurate. Burst in 70s surely outdoes burst in 29s? Players die in 60s in mere seconds. And 80s? Players get globaled (or seem unkillable). Enter the Dark Truth of Easy Gearing.
Upper brackets don't have higher burst. Rather, the upper brackets have many more players who don't gear up. How often do we see complaints about "bads in greens", a lack of enchants and gems, and messed up talent trees? Upper brackets are rife with examples. Not by coincidence, upper brackets also have the wider range of gearing options and better gear availability that lower and midbracket twinkers yearn. That's the Dark Truth of Easy Gearing. Brackets with easier gearing invite a higher proportion of lazier, undergeared twinkers.
When it comes to twinking, players fill a spectrum that ranges from slipshod gear/no professions/bad talents to BiS gear/capped professions/smart talents. Consider that the harder it is to gear for a bracket, the more likely that bracket will have a greater proportion of well-geared players. That's part of why 29s, 39s, and 49s are willing to play in small windows of opportunity (scheduled game nights) -- these brackets naturally filter out many players who prefer the easy gearing and quick pops of the upper brackets, so the midbrackets tend to get better quality games. The difficulty of gearing attracts some dedicated players, counterintuitive as that may be. The 49 bracket, notorious for its insane burst and countless instance runs for gear, still gets games to this day, because the bracket attracts devoted players.
To be clear, better gearing does not necessarily mean better PvP skills. Gearing up is a game in itself, to the point that Drayner used to call the "Fishing Hat Curse": once some players achieved a complete BiS twink, playtime on that character significantly dropped, sometimes to zero. That said, twinkers who spend the time to finish out their twinks' gear and professions typically bring better PvP skills than a "casual" twinker. The dark side of easy gearing mirrors one of the complaints we hear on the official WoW forums, that players twink because they couldn't handle endgame PvP. We like to talk about getting off the gear treadmill, but frankly, some twinkers never get out of their pajamas. Better gearing makes a difference both in twinking and in endgame PvP. Easy gearing provides a greater opportunity for players to participate, but a smaller proportion of those players will push their PvP skills.
There's a lot to enjoy in brackets with easier gearing, and daily games in such brackets reflect that. The harder-to-gear brackets bring a more serious streak to the fun they have. While players certainly appreciate easier gearing, brackets with easier gearing actually find more undergeared players, not less.
(Reprinted from 2011)
