"This Game is Too Easy!"

First off, Yes, I have played in multiple 10v10 twink wargames and premades and I fully understand that you CAN have fiercely competitive games as a twink and it is a lot of fun to do for bragging rights.

Probably going to get flamed for this opinion from all the rank 1 twinks out there, nonetheless.

"BG's are boring and I want more competition!"

I don't understand this conundrum, and its one I see quite often on these forums. If you want fierce, balanced and readily available competition, why not play end game? There is constantly a plethora of area's and rated battle grounds going on within in your respective skill bracket. At a high rating, these games require excellent teamwork and co-ordination in order to be successful on a routine basis and seems to offer everything that people who are "bored with the lack of competitive games" that twinking has to offer.

Lets be honest, most twink brackets are built around playing fotm classes. And yes, I'm aware some brackets (like 70s) are fairly balanced but its still no comparison to endgame balance.

However, at endgame you cant make claims like "I'm rank one rogue", or "I'm the most gear played in the world" because there are actual systems in place to track these rankings....

I play a twink to perform well above average in battlegrounds constantly, and be the definition of overachiever (and I hate the constant gear treadmill). I've played RBG's and arenas at endgame (albeit, not to a very high level) and I found the amount of team and co-ordination required was just too much for myself. I hate talking to people (on skype,vent,ect) when playing a game and I would much rather just listen to music while I game, which is hardly an option at anything 2k+ in arenas or rbg. I also dislike needing to rely on other players to perform well, which is why I aspire to be as self reliant as possible while playing my twinks and will solo que 99% of the time.

TLDR : If you're so bored with BG's, then stop queing with 3-4 other twinks, try solo queing and carrying a group of mouthbreathers to a seemingly impossible victory.

My two cents, see yah in the gulch.

I'm a level 70 twink who is really bored of battlegrounds and constantly try to push for competitive arena wargames in my bracket. So I guess I'll give my input.
tl;dr I push for competitive games in my twink bracket because I'm attached to it, and because I believe the games are better here

"Just play endgame" would be a valid criticism to a person like me if the only thing I cared about was competitive wow arena. But there are many other things I also care about:

My characters. I've played my twinks for many years, and they're somewhat important to me.

The community. Although a lot of people have quit the bracket or the game over time, I still have friends in my bracket that I enjoy playing with. This is probably my primary reason for playing wow in the first place.

The quality of the games themselves. It's still my belief that level 70 2v2 arena with healers is one of the best gamemodes in the entire game. I know a lot of endgame players, so I know 2v2 is usually thought of as a boring, slow paced, scripted gamemode that almost nobody really enjoys. But at level 70 the games are very fast paced (both damage and healing is very high relative to healthpools) which leads to very control-oriented games where offensive cooldowns almost don't matter, defensives are often forced from really minor mistakes, and games often end because of "plays" (and not because you ran out of buttons to press in the 5th setup).

Leading plebeians is part of being a twink. If you can't inspire and rally a team of mongs to a WSG w, then you aren't the gods gift to the bracket you think you are.

*Shakes cane* B-Back in m-my D-day s-sonny w-we had to w-walk e-everywhere u-until l-level s-sixty...

Why else do you think the in-game models are so fit

Gmac said:

Probably going to get flamed for this opinion from all the rank 1 twinks out there, nonetheless.

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Greetings, earthling. R1 twink here, & I wont flame you.

Gmac said:

"BG's are boring and I want more competition!"

If you want fierce, balanced and readily available competition, why not play end game?

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There is a great distinction between endgame RBGs and twink Battlegrounds, and I believe the majority of twink players dont fully understand what differs between the two.
While both require coordination & a team effort, neither share the same variables. Twinking is a fast-paced experience with a completely different playstyle than level cap. Twinks have to play much* smarter and figure out how to make ends meet without their finalized ability kit or maximum riding speed. This opens & closes so many doors for viability in twinking and allows certain specs to perform extremely well where at endgame, they just wouldn't work. Many also people like the customization twinking brings. You can run any amount of wacky proc gear & add unusual enchants to compensate for lack of spells and abilities. At endgame, the options are very limited...

BFA S1 was my first season of endgame Rated Battlegrounds. It was fun and all, but the playstyle is not for me.

https://www.twitch.tv/jwl1996/clip/SpotlessRenownedChowderCoolStoryBob

You cant abuse gap-closers like this at endgame without getting reported. 120s are unfamiliar with twink playstyle and any tricks a twink may have up his sleeve, could get him banned for cheating.
(I remember doing a few jumps last season at fairly high MMR and I was certain I was going to get in trouble for it)

Gmac said:

Lets be honest, most twink brackets are built around playing fotm classes. And yes, I'm aware some brackets (like 70s) are fairly balanced but its still no comparison to endgame balance.

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That could be what draws many people into twinking. People like the fast-paced gameplay. In most wargame scenarios, the organizer will dictate a set of rules for players to abide to avoid extreme unbalance. We did 4 or so 39 wargames last night and it was more fun than I've had through my entire season of endgame rated battlegrounds.

These are just some of my thoughts.

People twink for a lot of different reasons. What I like about the bracket I play the most (19s) comes down to a few things.

1. The community
2. The lack of mounts
3. Gearing
4. Nostalgia
5. Simplicity

Lots of my friends from back in the day have since quit the game, but some are still around. I’ve been on this site/twinkinfo for over 10 years now I believe. It’s good to see old faces now and then.

Mounts in pvp really change the game. Unfortunately, 19s now have many different speed increase abilities (Druid/sham etc) but back in the day, dying in a BG was something you had to consider. At end game, it is not a major issue as you can quickly mount and get to the enemy base.

I like the gearing aspect of twinks in two seperate ways. In one way, it is very easy to gear and become relavent and useful to your team either after a long break from the game or with a new toon. I also like the idea that grandfathered gear and old BoEs from Pre cata are useful and sometimes BiS.

Nostalgia for me is a combination of all of the above. Old friends, low level bgs, and old gear bring back a lot of memories.

You only have several buttons at 19, which can be both good and bad. Sure- at max level there are multiple stuns/CCs etc that are at your disposal, which takes more “skill” to coordinate. But I think there is some skill involved in using a limited toolkit and optimizing your abilities.

For anyone that knows me, I don’t have too much end game pvp experience- I havnt really done much end game pvp. I have been in top 100 PvE guilds in multiple expansions, and used to PvP in full-PvE gear as an arcane mage. Full glass cannon.

The first season of RBGs, I actually was the leader of a RBG group that I hand selected on my server as top PvPers. It was literally me with no pvp accolades and 5-6 glad level players lol. I used strats that we used to use back in the day at level 19, and went 30-0 or so before getting wrecked by Vanguards team. I really enjoyed playing something that was not really played or known about (PvE arcane) and was fairly successful with it. It was awesome to see that strats we used at 19 could be used at end game, and were fairly successful.

At this point in my life- I just don’t have the time to dedicate to pushing rating or raiding like I used to- and so I enjoy logging in for 3 or 4 bgs on my twinks and seeing familiar faces.

Gmac said:

I've played RBG's and arenas at endgame (albeit, not to a very high level) and I found the amount of team and co-ordination required was just too much for myself. I hate talking to people (on skype,vent,ect) when playing a game and I would much rather just listen to music while I game, which is hardly an option at anything 2k+ in arenas or rbg.

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XP off BGs used to be the only place you could just queue up WSG and get a game with 15+ people who knew how to play the game. Didn't need to play in voice, form groups, wait in queues/group finder, or deal with all the other BS it usually takes to play with and against decent players. They were a totally unique playstyle, a solid middle ground between organized 10v10s and carrying idiots in random BGs.

Those BGs are the reason a lot of us stuck around here. A lot of people who complain about easy/unbalanced pugs are trying to recreate some of that experience, even if it's probably a futile effort.

Personally, I just like the "difference" in twinking to endgame, and every bracket brings its own niche.

My gear isn't obsolete from raid tier to raid tier, pvp season to pvp season etc. BFA flipped the gearing around again, but there's a huge difference in gearing from expansion to expansion than tier to tier or season to season. I like that a lot. Makes for some good gearing accomplishments and /flex. I also like the customization options that twinking provides. At endgame every class has its ideal set to aim form for, where twinking is situational.

The game is also played differently, strats specifically tailored to their respective brackets and more that doesn't necessarily carry over to endgame. So playing twinks is a different experience in gameplay also.

Twinking also comes with a nice, little community that's easy to get into and get involved in right from the get-go through the right channels. I.e. this website, guilds and discords.

And once you've invested enough time into twinking, then just like anything with similar devotion and passion, it becomes a rather attached element. Your characters mean a lot to you and you enjoy playing with the friends you made along the journey etc.

You have all this AND the option for competition through wargames, guild vs guild and tournaments. It's not to the same extent as endgame, but it's there. All of these points and a few more is why I like twinking, personally.

For me it has a lot to do with low level brackets still having some sort of unique class identity.

Warriors are nothing but a mongo dps class with no CC? Good. That’s how they should be. Mages do a fuck ton of damage but die in two globals if you get on top of them? Good, that’s how it should be. Rogues are sneaky little bastards who can chain cc you into oblivion but don’t do a whole lot of damage on their own? Good.

You get idea.

Maybe it’s the old D&D nerd in me but it seems like end game has really lost touch with the basics of RPG class distinction. And I know, that’s hard to maintain in a game that really seeks parity in player experience, especially when the design philosophy has been “bring the player not the class” for so long.

I get that. Everyone wants to feel useful on a class they enjoy playing. But when every class has stuns and silences and defensive shields and nukes and yaddayadda, it really starts to blur the differences.

Twinks don’t have a lot of things going on and when you find that balance between everyone having fully fleshed out toolkits and still having distinct class feel, it’s really nice. So I like twinking specifically because it’s not bloated. Every class is distilled to its essence. You get to play a variety of very unique classes because not everyone has a stun, or an initiator, or a silence. Some folks do the big slow hits, some folks do the tiny speedy hits. There are legit glass cannons, and bruisers, and such.

Chops said:

Rogues are sneaky little bastards who can chain cc you into oblivion but don’t do a whole lot of damage on their own? Good.

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What?

This turned into a great thread in a hurry!

Some of the most fun I've had in this game happened during season 12, when I joined my first RBG team for a season. That was second only to a couple of years later, co-coaching a casual RBG team on a backwater server that ended up breaking into the top 10% of PvP guilds. The day we stole a 1600-1590 Arathi Basin by attacking three nodes at once and then collapsing onto the two we took...I don't think I've ever heard voice chat explode like that at the end of such a hard-fought game. I was so proud of that team.

I mention this because for all of the great (and terrible) reasons people get into twinking, what keeps people into twinking (or pushes them away) is the community, as @Dreams said. @Swoops made a good point that part of the greater push toward more competitive games comes from old-timers who remember the best of what XP-off battlegrounds had to offer. Those made for truly great games. But to be fair, those were the exception. More often than not, 3-0 WSG rolls ruled the day. Getting more balanced games posed a major challenge because the minority of players came for (and brought) the competition, and the majority (like myself) came to play rock'em sock'em twinkbots with the twinks they built.

With that said, good games still appear today. @Bestworld 's comment about strats tailored to specific brackets is spot-on, and @jwl 's comments about the greater variety of choices rings true. I share @Laernyth 's approach to PuGs, as frustrating as that can be when dealing with levelers who just want to get carried because they couldn't hack it in a dungeon, and then make snide comments about twinks vs. endgame.

I also want to expand on what @Chops said about classes feeling much more distinct at lower levels. I had the unique privilege of getting to play in the two XP-off games that level 10-14 twinks managed to pop, before the patch that scaled players to the top of a bracket. Those two games were absolutely dynamite. The 10-14 bracket had so much potential, and it was a damn shame that the community squandered that opportunity. But organizing XP-off games was always really hard, so I put that failure more on Blizzard.

Twinks make WoW their own, in ways other games can't even begin to offer. For all my criticisms of WoW, and make no mistake I have some big ones, I continue to find inspiration among twinkers. Endgame can offer fun and depth, but there's something about how some twinks make the most of unintended limits that pushes me to do the same.

Many of the best PvP times I've had playing WoW have been on twinks.

Max level rated PvP has always been too serious & stressful. Too frustrating due to every class having 2-3 bubbles and at least one IWIN button. Its a fallacy PvP is better balanced at max level. There's always at least one God-tier class mouthbreathers can abuse to dominate, and the PvP value of specs goes up & down like a yoyo from patch to patch - a business decision Blizzard makes to encourage class rerolls thereby keep players subbing longer.

Even at its most balanced endgame PvP is cooldowns vs cooldowns not player vs player. If all yours are up in a 1 on 1 against someone who's cds are down you always win and vice versa. At 19 or 29 characters don't have 2 or 3 minute IWIN buttons so against similarly geared twinks to succeed you have to outplay.... and hope for procs lol.

Twinking also trumps endgame because the community is infinitely friendlier and you get fewer tryhard wankers. You also don't get scrubs who pay for carries then insist you respect their rating, and the entire community isn't subdivided into MMR. The twink community is refreshingly chill & casual yet underneath it people still take their characters seriously, the balance is so much better.

Twinks are a casual distraction from endgame. If your endgame is twinks.... ..smh

Psilocybine said:

Twinks are a casual distraction from endgame. If your endgame is twinks.... ..smh

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Twinks are not a casual distraction from endgame to many of us. And endgame isnt even a casual distraction from twinks to most of us. We find it that boring.

jwl said:

Twinks are not a casual distraction from endgame to many of us. And endgame isnt even a casual distraction from twinks to most of us. We find it that boring.

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Thats like saying, lets play mortal kombat but you cant use any combos. You are limiting yourself and claiming its better.

Psilocybine said:

Thats like saying, lets play mortal kombat but you cant use any combos. You are limiting yourself and claiming its better.

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"better" is such a subjective term. And at the end of the day, it comes down to what you enjoy.
Just because you believe ketchup taste better on a hotdog than egg yolk, doesn't mean everyone else prefers ketchup too.
This is a twink-community website where many players hold a bias and enjoy twinking more than endgame.

Psilocybine said:

Twinks are a casual distraction from endgame. If your endgame is twinks.... ..smh

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Your post would hold more water if current endgame & the BFA expansion in general wasn't a pale imitation of previous xpacs.