:(
- Thread starter saxxon
- Start date
OP
OP
r u okay?
Mazurati
OG
Why do you have a "founder" tag? You came after a LOT of people
Hajima
Legend
imy
Restoshaman
OG
I am until I remember those Only Ninteen days in thunder bluff dueling are never coming back
Emelia
Twink Community Facilitator
Can I have a mature and thought out answer as to why the 20s community has chosen to not reroll as 19?
Wouldn't going 19 facilitate a return to being twinks at the top of a bracket whilst retaining a f2p state?
I hear a lot of people say they miss 20s and 19s... I'm not sure why the pvp community didn't crunch with the content....
Did pvpers forget they are a min-max based playstyle?
Pve adjusted and is now the carry of the community...
Thank you for any thoughtful opinions.
Wouldn't going 19 facilitate a return to being twinks at the top of a bracket whilst retaining a f2p state?
I hear a lot of people say they miss 20s and 19s... I'm not sure why the pvp community didn't crunch with the content....
Did pvpers forget they are a min-max based playstyle?
Pve adjusted and is now the carry of the community...
Thank you for any thoughtful opinions.
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Dragpz
Legend
Can I have a mature and thought out answer as to why the 20s community has chosen to not reroll as 19?
Wouldn't going 19 facilitate a return to being twinks at the top of a bracket whilst retaining a f2p state?
I hear a lot of people say they miss 20s and 19s... I'm not sure why the pvp community didn't crunch with the content....
Did pvpers forget they are a min-max based playstyle?
Pve adjusted and is now the carry of the community...
Thank you for any thoughtful opinions.
Unfortunately not, since F2P cannot queue 19s unsubbed or with XP turned off. The main selling point of 20s twinks was that it was free and you could easily dunk on newbies who didn't know how to play the game. PVP twinking in general is just bullying under-geared, under-skilled players, and if you could do it for free? *Chef's kiss* The main reason why many twinks moved to 29s was the stomp and oneshot the 20s. And this is also why many people moved to Wrath 19s Twinking, because they get faster queues, and are able to play with average underskilled players since queues aren't separated like they are in retail. PVE has almost always kinda been a footnote in the 20s community. Sure, it's impressive that dedicated players like Conzil, Crystalpall, Aislingaio, etc. are able to achieve great things as F2P, but most of the community kinda lived and died on PVP twinking.
But yeah, ultimately, while twinking is a min-max based playstyle, there is no point if you aren't having any fun. And fun for most of the PVP twink community was just pwning newbies.
Emelia
Twink Community Facilitator
Ah, so for 90% of the community it was never about GG it was always about bullying? Interesting, the moment bullying develops an obstacle it reseeds or stops outright. Just like IRL
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Dragpz
Legend
Exactly. There are those in the community that are interested in fair play and wargames etc., but that is a very niche sub-community. The PVP community has gone through massive changes and balances throughout the years, and every time Blizzard balanced the bracket, people just started complaining (Legion templates, bracket level changes etc.)
There's probably a few better examples out there, but here's when they split the Xpoff and Xpon queues 4 or so years ago (https://xpoff.com/threads/the-future-of-29-twinking.84432/)
Lots of complaining, coping, etc. until eventual acceptance. Some moved over to 20s, some found other x9's brackets to play, some quit. Before that, the brackets also went from 20-24s, 25-29s, and people were complaining when they got rid of that too. So if the twinking community was ever good at anything, it was definitely complaining.
Tham
Member
Little late here, but as pointed out above, a "bug" has prevented F2P level 19 players from turning XP off and queueing for battlegrounds for a long time. I actually learned this the hard way years ago when the F2P gold cap was 10g and recently discovered this was still the case, hence the quotes around "bug."
I just wanted to add that, at least for me, twinking has little to do with "bullying" and everything to do with playing the game for free.
Expanding on above...Ah, so for 90% of the community it was never about GG it was always about bullying? Interesting, the moment bullying develops an obstacle it reseeds or stops outright. Just like IRL
I only recently (about a week ago) started playing F2P and have already experienced the unbelievable gap in power between a level 20 and a level 29 in PvP. Maybe I'm in the minority, but my first reaction when getting 1-shot by them wasn't to throw up my arms and quit (or subscribe).
Why? I'll try to explain concisely. Please remember these are my opinions - I'm not out to argue with anyone, just boiling down my reasoning for playing F2P that exclude dunking on low level and new players. TLDR in bold.
1. I like the idea of playing a "simpler" version of the game. I play every expansion, eventually burn out, and unsubscribe. Since the hype over hardcore classic WoW, I've given thought to trying that, but alas, that would cost me $15/mo. Personally, I have a hard time justifying the full price tag for a game I played (and more or less completed - competitively raided and PvPed) almost 20 years ago, especially if I'm not also playing retail in parallel. I guess I see classic as more of a supplement to retail, but with more than a supplemental price. As mentioned in other threads, playing F2P comes along with a set of challenges similar to hardcore classic anyways.
2. Turns out, I get a very similar dopamine rush from seeing RNG at work at level 20 as I do at level 70. My content of choice in retail is mythic plus. My goal for each season was generally to hit Keystone Hero or above, netting me a title, mount, and sweet loot along the way. This might take a few weeks to a few months as a solo player. As an F2P level 20, I found I get a similar thrill when RNGesus blesses me with a WF ilvl upgrade + tert + socket drop. I also even get a little nostalgia trip from farming old dungeons for a while.
3. Fifteen dollars is relative. Do I have the money? Yes. If subscribed, would I feel like I'm getting $15 worth of value/fun over playing the content available to me as an F2P player? Not at this exact moment. There's a surprising amount of content available to F2P players, but value is subjective. I can see how a subscriber may think dumping hundreds of hours into a level 20 is shallow and meaningless, while on the other hand I can understand an F2P player wanting more for their $15 and appreciating everything the game has to offer for free before spending money.
4. PvP is still fun and rewarding. I know this is the one that's hard to swallow for most F2Pers. Yeah, I get my @ss handed to me regularly even with a decent set of "twink" gear on (ilvl80+ average) by twinks at the top end of the bracket, but it's not SO bad that I AFK out and quit. In fact, I still feel like we (Horde) win more than 50% of games, and that I... help and stuff! We'd all turn off XP at 19 if it were free, but it's not. Clearly, I'm not the only one who thinks being a 19 twink is not worth $15, hence the level 20 community. Also, as an OG vanilla player, the original battlegrounds have always been my favorite. Nothing like getting into a fresh WSG and darting across the battlefield, flag on my back and team watching my six!
5. I enjoy slowly accruing available currencies for free. Gold, heirlooms, honor tokens, etc.
As you can see, nothing in there about bullying lower level, less skilled players. If anything, there seems to be a good mix of level 20 twinks and level 29 twinks in all my games, so it tends to even out. I'm not poking fun at those who twink for the sole purpose of bulldozing lower level non-twinks either - I think I had a rogue in the 20s or 30s bracket back in the OG vanilla days, so I can empathize with players missing that too. Hell, aren't people who casually play retail getting 1-shot by others in mythic raid gear in PvP anyways? Doesn't feel like I need to fork over $15 a month for that pleasure when I can get it for free.
Dragpz
Legend
Very good points, I play F2P for many of the same reasons. I will say that not being able to queue 19s as F2P is actually intended, because Blizz does not want people to twink 19s for free. The error message even says "That action is not available on a Free Trial account".
I've also played since Vanilla, starting around whenever they offerred the Open Beta Stress Testing way back then. But I have been playing F2P ever since they started offering it, all the way back since Cataclysm. And like I said earlier, I play for many of the same reasons that you've listed. The odds have always been stacked against F2P players, and they have even queued with 24s, 29s twinks that had advantages over them. At the time, the advantages weren't too great, some classes had an interrupt and slightly more stats, but on top of that, we were still queueing with Xp-on players, so its not like we were losing every engagement. Soon after, 29s players would eventually be separated into Xpoff queues, resulting in some joining 20s F2P, some going into other brackets, and some quitting entirely.
For a bit a context, BFA PVP wasn't too bad for F2P, as BiS was epic-upgraded quest rewards or Legion BoEs and it was a very healer-heavy meta. We still queued with Xp-off players, so queue times weren't bad. Some people complained about grinding for an epic Foamspittle Staff, but the game was still decently fun.
Fast forward to maybe around Shadowlands. At the start of Shadowlands, there was a level squish, and gearing was majorly messed up. Blizz was quick to fix most of these issues within a week or two, as there were tons of players doing BGs with this OP gear. There were a small group of twinks that stumbled upon the fact that you can socket an artifact weapon with epic-procced relics pre-SL launch, and they abused this glitch to 1-shot players in battlegrounds. This glitch lasted for 6-7 months before it was finally patched, which severely hampered peoples interest in the game. On top of that, there was also an issue with Covenant Abilities, where you could party sync a higher level into low level BGs. This was also not fixed until months later. So F2P players have had to deal with getting 1-shot for months. And then, a few months prior to DF launch, Blizz would stealth fix F2P/Vet players into the XPon queue, massively harming the already dwindling 20s PVP playerbase.
Now, in Dragonflight, we queue only against other F2Ps and 29s. It wouldn't be so bad if the bracket was more balanced and 20s could stand a chance against 29s. But even in full BiS warforged gear, which would likely take months or years to acheive BiS, you would still get 1-shot by a 29 twink. So why even farm so hard for a set of BiS just to get wrecked by a 29.
I commend you for fighting against 29s, because that's the true spirit of F2P 20s, but most of 20s playerbase has been doing that for a very long time. And now, on top of having to deal with getting 1-shot for years because of game-breaking bugs, we have to deal with the imbalance of not having a fair match even at 100% BiS, which would take months to farm, many of my peers have quit the game. And understandably so, because the bracket has been in flux for a long time.
chelly
Legend
Cata classic. The dream
Can’t wait to bully people there. Or again on retail 20s. Whichever comes first. I will not play 20 BGs in current state and would rather sit and lurk while focusing my time elsewhere.
Also the term bully is relative. There’s people that que twinks for a few games to have a good time. And then there’s people that sync premade on discord 2 full groups of fotm classes and pop consums on cd
The latter bullies were the problem and imo killed our bracket - Not the average pvp focused f2p. (I’m defending myself).
Can’t wait to bully people there. Or again on retail 20s. Whichever comes first. I will not play 20 BGs in current state and would rather sit and lurk while focusing my time elsewhere.
Also the term bully is relative. There’s people that que twinks for a few games to have a good time. And then there’s people that sync premade on discord 2 full groups of fotm classes and pop consums on cd
The latter bullies were the problem and imo killed our bracket - Not the average pvp focused f2p. (I’m defending myself).
Tham
Member
Thanks for the dialogue - well thought out and informative.
Oddly enough, it's hard to be upset or angry at Blizzard for not balancing, fixing, tailoring or catering to people at all who play the game for free (at level 20 no less). As a long-term player who's sought out content at all levels, I think it makes complete sense for them to focus all their attention on late game activities where the majority of the paying player base eventually ends up.
While I've only had a taste of F2P life, it also makes sense that changes made to the game overall have unintended ripple effects that trickle down and effect lower level characters in many aspects of the game. Regarding these effects - good or bad - I'm willing to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt here and say they aren't aware of some of the less offensive, non-game breaking consequences, while some of the more irritating ones they know of and simply don't prioritize because they are annoyances to a fraction of [non-paying] players.
That said, I march on!
Oddly enough, it's hard to be upset or angry at Blizzard for not balancing, fixing, tailoring or catering to people at all who play the game for free (at level 20 no less). As a long-term player who's sought out content at all levels, I think it makes complete sense for them to focus all their attention on late game activities where the majority of the paying player base eventually ends up.
While I've only had a taste of F2P life, it also makes sense that changes made to the game overall have unintended ripple effects that trickle down and effect lower level characters in many aspects of the game. Regarding these effects - good or bad - I'm willing to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt here and say they aren't aware of some of the less offensive, non-game breaking consequences, while some of the more irritating ones they know of and simply don't prioritize because they are annoyances to a fraction of [non-paying] players.
That said, I march on!
Dragpz
Legend
And I salute you for your dedication. However, I do entirely place the blame on Blizzard. They're the ones that randomly decided to separate Free players from the XPon bracket and have decided to leave the game in such a broken state for a long time. If you develop a game or product, you own it from start to finish and are responsible for the end-user's experience from start to finish. I will say that I don't expect them to cater to Twinks or F2P players, even though quite a few of them still have subbed accounts and still pay for cash shop items, but I do expect them to improve the player experience, and not detract from it *cough cough D4*. I understand that's a pretty high bar to set considering Activision-Blizzard's track record so far, but I would say that it's a reasonable expectation for a game developer to patch game-breaking exploits as well as look for ways to improve and expand the amount of ways players can enjoy your game.