Rayekk
OG
Okay, fair warning- this is a HUGE wall of text (beware the crit!) but I was bored at work, so I started working of a history of twinks, specifically the 19’s bracket. I'm looking for factual errors and extended information- if you see a section that needs work, please quote it in your response- if it's an over-arching comment, then just give me the section it's in. Also, I've not proofed it yet, so please refrain from the "lrn2spell" stuff.
My hopes are to post this in the guides section; maybe post on wowwiki.
INCOMING!
A Twink history- the 19s Bracket
In order to understand where twinks are going, once has to understand where twinks began. In this brief history, I’ll attempt to capture the key milestones that have shaped twinking into its current state.
The Beginnings
The World of Warcraft changes drastically with the introduction of Patch 1.5- BATTLEGROUNDS! For the first time, Alliance and Horde could meet on the field of battle in competition for a common goal. Back in these early days, these battlegrounds were dominated by the end-game level 60 raiders with the best epics and enchantments available at the time. It became clear to PvP players that if you had access to the end-game content, then you were virtually un-stoppable to lesser-geared players of the same level.
At some point it occurred to a PvPer that, by applying these end-game raiding enchants to a lower level character with carefully selected gear resulted in a huge advantage over characters of the same level in the battlegrounds. The only requirement was that you pick one of the five brackets, and level the character to the top of that bracket and stop gaining XP. As a result, these newly-formed super-PvPer where the first twinks of WoW. The 19 bracket was naturally the first (and many times, final) stop for this newly-formed pastime. As the community grew, so did the interest and challenges of higher-level bracket, with active and dangerous twinks in all brackets, including 29s, 39s, 49s and 59s. With each new expansion comes a new bracket to explore and dominate.
The term “Twinking” in WoW
While many people argue over it’s origin, there is no denying that the term “twink” has become the defacto term for characters with gear and enchants that far outweigh their level. Some argue that the term “twink” was a carry-over from Everquest’s “Twinkie”- a character alt that could acquire a bronze plate armor that could be equipped by lower level characters. The low level characters were completely clad in golden bronze armor with a high armor value but still only had a handful of hitpoints, making them golden on the outside, and squishy on the inside. The other term is the gay version of a “Sugar-daddy;” having a higher level character “pay” for the lower character’s equipment and enchants, as well as provide them with “low-level run throughs” of selected instances for best-in-slots gear. Regardless of the term, today tinking doesn’t require the player having a max-level main character to help the funding process, though it does help in securing certain gear only available to them (See Bind on Account gear). Twinking used to be a tier exclusive to the 19 and 29 brackets, but as the game evolved and changed, twinks began to appear in all brackets, including the very popular 39s, & 49s. Since the latest expansion, many twinks have left the mid 59s, mostly due to the introduction of the hero class, the Deathknight. Due to their design, and to help players embrace the new class, Deathknights enter the gaming world at 58 with huge advantages over their 59 twinking counterparts. With an epic-speed mount, high burst damage, self-healing abilities and superior gear targeted directly at the 57-58 level, Deathknights have flooded the 59 bracket like locust on a wheat field. Only future patches will dictate if this overlooked twinking bracket will become more-balanced.
The Early Twinking in 19s
Like many underground movements, twinking was largely invisible to most leveling players, as there was no official stance on their status. Many early twinks leveraged hard-to-get head and leg enchantments available though the Libram enhancement system, as well as rare chest, weapon and hand enchants that only end-game raiding players had access to. As the community grew, twinks became to organize pre-made PvP battles (later shortened to Premades) and started guilds with players dedicated PvP in the lower brackets. With the introduction of patch 1.7 and the Fishing Extravaganza, twinks where soon seen finishing on the shores of STV to used seemingly inconsequential fishing gear to their low-level advantage. It was also at this time that many twinks where seen in the Gurubashi Arena, gathering the tokens for the best-in-slot Arena Grand Master (AGM) trinket. With the launch of patch 1.12, the twinking community grew exponentially with the advent of cross-server battlegrounds in the form of the newly-formed Battlegroup system. Not only did this open up the pool of twinks, but gave twinks a place to communicate in the official WoW forums. Soon, twinks and twinking guilds from across the realms were coordinating premades and challenging individually and in guilds to see who was “the best in bracket.”
It was at this time that twinking was first placed under-fire. Players leveling though the game content found themselves increasingly out-matched when they joined a Battleground and complaints about in-game cheating and TOS violations started to surface. It was during this time that twinking gained its highest infamy, and Blizzard responded with the now-famous stance: We will not hinder, or help, the pastime of twinking. In fact, while twinking was never designed as a funcitonal part of the PvP system, Blizzard has gone on to say that twinking is a metagame within the overall game.
While many people differ on the details, in this time the twinking ranks were heavily populated by mostly two classes: Rogues and Hunters. Many believe that was because of the lack of overall health points (HP) and low talent tree development of the caster characters, while the inherent plate classes (Warriors and Paladins) were not seen as viable DPS classes (something that later patches would radically change). Overall, the common-denominators between the three most-revenant classes where two things: easier hand/weapon enchants and leather gear stats. Simply put, early level cloth gear didn’t have a strong focus on survivability or increased spell power, and enchantments that focused on caster stats were harder for end-game raiders to obtain.
The Resurgence, the Expansion and All New Rules
Blizzards’ first expansion for WoW, The Burning Crusade (BC) and its subsequent patches, drove twinking to new heights and helped players hone their skills against their own factions with the introduction of Arenas. Launched in patch 2.0.1, just before the full launch of the expansion pack, Arena game play extended the one-on-one dueling that most twinks did to pass long queue times, and helped players develop new tactics and strategies that made their way into the battlegrounds. Gear improvement came in the form of new, powerful weapon, boots, hands and wrist enchants, the introduction of Leg Patch Enhancements, and the increased level cap of 70 opened the door for Naxx farming for shoulder inscriptions. As the costs for materials dropped and the introduction of daily, money-generating daily quests for characters of the max level, players found that they could improve their low-level PvP killing machines to insane levels. Twinks found that a max-level leatherworkers and tailors could place end-game raiding leg patches on any legs in the game, increasing health and damage stats to levels equal of many level 40 characters. Others found that shoulder inscriptions awarded by rep or in the 60-level Naxx raid encounter could likewise be placed on low-level shoulders and mailed to twinks, making a once useless gear piece extremely powerful. And let’s not forget about the new weapon, hand and wrist enchants! It was at this time that many twinks began looking to bind of equip (BoE) best-in-slot green and blue pants for their leg patches, over the pervious BoP offerings.
It was in this timeframe that Blizzard first started the “Grandfathering” policy. At first, it was inadvertent. Many players with access to Naxx raid shoulder inscriptions where using them on white level gear. Anyone that was motivated to run Naxx could gain access to these inscriptions. The change came in patch 2.3, where Blizzard adjusted the “quality” of many in-game lower-level items, including selected white shoulders. The shoulders became bind on pickup (BoP) or soulbound, and any enchants on them where carried upward. Unintentionally, Blizzard created items that could not be replicated because of the application mechanics of the shoulder enchantments, and the nature of the shoulders themselves. While there was an advantage to having these shoulders, many of them where rare, and not many players decried their use. Blizzard also introduced item level requirements, limiting many of the BC to gear with an item level of 35 or more. Again, anyone who had gear with these enchants before the patch carried the enchants forward, and those who hadn’t could no longer do so.
Is was also in the BC days that players started experimenting with game-mechanic-breaking exploits. While I’ll not go into much detail on the “how” on this subject, exploits became the new “underground” method of gaining an advantage over other PvPers. The exploits came in two overall flavors: in-game bug exploits and gaining additional gear enhancements with creative “work-arounds” in the game’s soulbinding mechanic. Some twinks took a page form the Naxx shoulder inscriptions handbook, applying powerful Aldor/Scryer rep-based inscriptions onto low-level white shoulders and breaking the game’s soulbinding mechanics in order to mail these powerful shoulders to their twinks. PvP-specific head inscriptions, available from Shattered Sun rep shortly followed. Others found undocumented bugs, such as the now infamous no-level requirement Enti's Quenched Sword that offered twinks high, undocumented damage (the Tooltip showed 2-3 damage, but the reality was it had a damage range of 2-273) and the ability to accept BC weapon enchants, making this two-hander exceptionally deadly. It was during this time that twinks first started to see characters and accounts banned for their experimenting with head and shoulder enchantments.
In these days of twinking, there were more and more complaints about equality and cost of creating twinks to compete in the lower brackets. Popular opinion was starting to turn against twinks, seeing them as overpowered bullies that like to grief any non-twink that entered a BG. Whilel this was true for a small minority, most twinks and twinking guilds participated in BG premades and continued to look for increasingly difficult, and ultimately longer, battles.
On the class side, this time was the explosion of the caster classes. No longer Rogues and Hunters dominate the group compositions- Priests, Warlocks and Glass-Cannon Mages became a more frequent sight on the WSG field, forcing long-time players to change tactics and strategies. Additionally, the faction-specific classes were eliminated in this patch, with the horde faction gaining access to the Paladin class and the Alliance seeing their first Shamans in the game. Naturally, these “new” classes were embraced by twinks as twinks, leveling the abilities playing field. Many argue that this was the “Golden Age” of twinking in the 19 bracket because of these wide-sweeping changes.
The Second Expansion, Bind on Account items and Old Tricks on new Twinks
Blizzard’s second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK), had a newly-focused goal for Blizzard: helping players level alternate characters (Alts) faster and more efficiently by offering bind on account (BoA) heirloom items. The twink community saw these new trinkets, weapons and shoulders as a godsend, providing a new best-in-slot item tailored specially for their class. And true to form, creative twinks quickly learned that their old unused Naxx and old-world rep shoulder inscriptions could be applied to these shoulders, again providing an advantage that could not be duplicated as the enchantments where no longer available. Initially it seems that Blizzard had not made the same “mistake” they had with BC leg patches, requiring a level 70 to apply the enchantment, as well as making the item soulbound in the process. The same was true for BoA weapons; or so they thought. Twinks again pushed the limit of creative “work-arounds” and found that these leg patched, as well as poisoned and shaman weapon spell and high-level scopes could be allied to BoE pants and BoA weapons, and mailed back to twinks by breaking the souldbound game mechanic. Additionally, a PvP level 70 shoulder inscription was made available to players, and twinks found that you could apply these shoulder enchants on all BoA shoulders for an incredible advantage. During this early time, it was not uncommon to see level 19 twinks with upwards of 3500 HP fully buffed, facing off leveling 19s with less that 900. BG’s became black and while- either complete steamroll victories or agonizingly long turtle fights of who had the greater will.
The second arguably overpowered feature that WotLK brought was new professions character enhancements and the removal of gathering profession level limits. Blizzard integrated scaling stats (HP increase, a healing-over-time spell and crit rating) to each of the gathering skills to make them more attractive to end-game players. The also removed the previous level requirements, as they felt that the zones would regulate themselves (a 19 in Outlands/Northrend seems inconceivable). Once again, twinks showed their creativity and dedication, leveraging high-level “bodyguards” to protect them while they herbed, skinned and mined their way to 450, and incredibly powerful stats. Additionally, and undocumented mining/Stam bug was first discovered, creating even more confusion as to how twinks were becoming so hard to dispatch. The code somehow was converting the 7 Stam/70HP into 70 Stam, resulting in 700 HP. The last profession shake-up was the newly-created inscriptionist and with them came powerful player-created off-hand weapons with skill requirements like the popular engineering tradeskill. However, unlike the gathering professions, Blizzard quickly took steps to correct this “oversight” and institute level requirements, nullifying their use and infuriating twinks who’d dropped trades like jewelcrafting or engineering to do so.
Then Blizzard took a step that many though would destroy twinking- they removed the ability to use Naxx and rep shoulder inscriptions on BoA shoulders and reinstated the level caps, while grandfathering the items and skills upward. For the first time, super-twinks were in the BG’s that could not be re-created by new players. These grandfathered changes split the twinking community for a time, with many calling for reduction of these powerful, now unattainable advantages, while others took the stance that Blizzard has no right to remove something that a player rightfully earned. Many players even objected to the powerful stats that BoA gear provided that they had no access to without a 80-level character. The PvP shoulder inscription was still viable, and more and more twinks were turning to exploits to gain a perceived “equal ground.” The Hunter class was deemed extremely overpowered with both pet and class mechanic changes, and retribution Paladins, Warriors and Priest became more common on the battlefield.
However change was on the horizon.
Enter Patch 3.1- Everything Old is New Again or Skill>Gear
Blizzard’s 3.1 patch changed all the rules for twinks in the 19 bracket. This patch instituted level requirements for twinking enchantments going all the way back to patch 1.5. All end-game focused leg patches, shoulder inscriptions, profession character enhancements librams, scopes and selected enchantments have effectively been removed from the twink’s tool box by now having level requirements. These level requirements where made retro-active, removing beneficial stats from all applications. For the first time, Blizzard halted its practice of grandfathering item and character enchantments. No area was left untouched; once best-in-slot fishing boots now require level 35; twinks with 450 professions had no access to the bonus stats or abilities. Both exploited gear and BC/WotLK enhanced gear where covered in this wide-spread nerf of twinks.
Many heralded this as the end of twinking; others praised the patch changes for equalizing the lower bracket and re-invigorating the PvP; more still felt a sense of betrayal over time, energy and gold investment becoming instantly unless. But Blizzard was not looking to end twinking with this patch. They, as they always have, remain neutral on the topic of twinking. Or so it seems. Upon further inspection, all new low-level gear has been introduced, and existing stats have been altered that seem to lend themselves to the twinking world. And, best of all, the new level requirements futher removed any unfair advantage left from exploited gear and grandfathered abilitles. Simply put, a twink created three years ago will not out-gear one created yesterday, as it was pre 3.1.
It’s much discussed within the twinking forum as to what the future holds for twinking in the 19s. Many call 3.1 the second coming of the “Golden Age” while others have retired from twinking for other challenges. One thing remains true: Twinking is here to stay in the World of Warcraft, as its shown creativity and elasticity to the class and gear changes.
My hopes are to post this in the guides section; maybe post on wowwiki.
INCOMING!
A Twink history- the 19s Bracket
In order to understand where twinks are going, once has to understand where twinks began. In this brief history, I’ll attempt to capture the key milestones that have shaped twinking into its current state.
The Beginnings
The World of Warcraft changes drastically with the introduction of Patch 1.5- BATTLEGROUNDS! For the first time, Alliance and Horde could meet on the field of battle in competition for a common goal. Back in these early days, these battlegrounds were dominated by the end-game level 60 raiders with the best epics and enchantments available at the time. It became clear to PvP players that if you had access to the end-game content, then you were virtually un-stoppable to lesser-geared players of the same level.
At some point it occurred to a PvPer that, by applying these end-game raiding enchants to a lower level character with carefully selected gear resulted in a huge advantage over characters of the same level in the battlegrounds. The only requirement was that you pick one of the five brackets, and level the character to the top of that bracket and stop gaining XP. As a result, these newly-formed super-PvPer where the first twinks of WoW. The 19 bracket was naturally the first (and many times, final) stop for this newly-formed pastime. As the community grew, so did the interest and challenges of higher-level bracket, with active and dangerous twinks in all brackets, including 29s, 39s, 49s and 59s. With each new expansion comes a new bracket to explore and dominate.
The term “Twinking” in WoW
While many people argue over it’s origin, there is no denying that the term “twink” has become the defacto term for characters with gear and enchants that far outweigh their level. Some argue that the term “twink” was a carry-over from Everquest’s “Twinkie”- a character alt that could acquire a bronze plate armor that could be equipped by lower level characters. The low level characters were completely clad in golden bronze armor with a high armor value but still only had a handful of hitpoints, making them golden on the outside, and squishy on the inside. The other term is the gay version of a “Sugar-daddy;” having a higher level character “pay” for the lower character’s equipment and enchants, as well as provide them with “low-level run throughs” of selected instances for best-in-slots gear. Regardless of the term, today tinking doesn’t require the player having a max-level main character to help the funding process, though it does help in securing certain gear only available to them (See Bind on Account gear). Twinking used to be a tier exclusive to the 19 and 29 brackets, but as the game evolved and changed, twinks began to appear in all brackets, including the very popular 39s, & 49s. Since the latest expansion, many twinks have left the mid 59s, mostly due to the introduction of the hero class, the Deathknight. Due to their design, and to help players embrace the new class, Deathknights enter the gaming world at 58 with huge advantages over their 59 twinking counterparts. With an epic-speed mount, high burst damage, self-healing abilities and superior gear targeted directly at the 57-58 level, Deathknights have flooded the 59 bracket like locust on a wheat field. Only future patches will dictate if this overlooked twinking bracket will become more-balanced.
The Early Twinking in 19s
Like many underground movements, twinking was largely invisible to most leveling players, as there was no official stance on their status. Many early twinks leveraged hard-to-get head and leg enchantments available though the Libram enhancement system, as well as rare chest, weapon and hand enchants that only end-game raiding players had access to. As the community grew, twinks became to organize pre-made PvP battles (later shortened to Premades) and started guilds with players dedicated PvP in the lower brackets. With the introduction of patch 1.7 and the Fishing Extravaganza, twinks where soon seen finishing on the shores of STV to used seemingly inconsequential fishing gear to their low-level advantage. It was also at this time that many twinks where seen in the Gurubashi Arena, gathering the tokens for the best-in-slot Arena Grand Master (AGM) trinket. With the launch of patch 1.12, the twinking community grew exponentially with the advent of cross-server battlegrounds in the form of the newly-formed Battlegroup system. Not only did this open up the pool of twinks, but gave twinks a place to communicate in the official WoW forums. Soon, twinks and twinking guilds from across the realms were coordinating premades and challenging individually and in guilds to see who was “the best in bracket.”
It was at this time that twinking was first placed under-fire. Players leveling though the game content found themselves increasingly out-matched when they joined a Battleground and complaints about in-game cheating and TOS violations started to surface. It was during this time that twinking gained its highest infamy, and Blizzard responded with the now-famous stance: We will not hinder, or help, the pastime of twinking. In fact, while twinking was never designed as a funcitonal part of the PvP system, Blizzard has gone on to say that twinking is a metagame within the overall game.
While many people differ on the details, in this time the twinking ranks were heavily populated by mostly two classes: Rogues and Hunters. Many believe that was because of the lack of overall health points (HP) and low talent tree development of the caster characters, while the inherent plate classes (Warriors and Paladins) were not seen as viable DPS classes (something that later patches would radically change). Overall, the common-denominators between the three most-revenant classes where two things: easier hand/weapon enchants and leather gear stats. Simply put, early level cloth gear didn’t have a strong focus on survivability or increased spell power, and enchantments that focused on caster stats were harder for end-game raiders to obtain.
The Resurgence, the Expansion and All New Rules
Blizzards’ first expansion for WoW, The Burning Crusade (BC) and its subsequent patches, drove twinking to new heights and helped players hone their skills against their own factions with the introduction of Arenas. Launched in patch 2.0.1, just before the full launch of the expansion pack, Arena game play extended the one-on-one dueling that most twinks did to pass long queue times, and helped players develop new tactics and strategies that made their way into the battlegrounds. Gear improvement came in the form of new, powerful weapon, boots, hands and wrist enchants, the introduction of Leg Patch Enhancements, and the increased level cap of 70 opened the door for Naxx farming for shoulder inscriptions. As the costs for materials dropped and the introduction of daily, money-generating daily quests for characters of the max level, players found that they could improve their low-level PvP killing machines to insane levels. Twinks found that a max-level leatherworkers and tailors could place end-game raiding leg patches on any legs in the game, increasing health and damage stats to levels equal of many level 40 characters. Others found that shoulder inscriptions awarded by rep or in the 60-level Naxx raid encounter could likewise be placed on low-level shoulders and mailed to twinks, making a once useless gear piece extremely powerful. And let’s not forget about the new weapon, hand and wrist enchants! It was at this time that many twinks began looking to bind of equip (BoE) best-in-slot green and blue pants for their leg patches, over the pervious BoP offerings.
It was in this timeframe that Blizzard first started the “Grandfathering” policy. At first, it was inadvertent. Many players with access to Naxx raid shoulder inscriptions where using them on white level gear. Anyone that was motivated to run Naxx could gain access to these inscriptions. The change came in patch 2.3, where Blizzard adjusted the “quality” of many in-game lower-level items, including selected white shoulders. The shoulders became bind on pickup (BoP) or soulbound, and any enchants on them where carried upward. Unintentionally, Blizzard created items that could not be replicated because of the application mechanics of the shoulder enchantments, and the nature of the shoulders themselves. While there was an advantage to having these shoulders, many of them where rare, and not many players decried their use. Blizzard also introduced item level requirements, limiting many of the BC to gear with an item level of 35 or more. Again, anyone who had gear with these enchants before the patch carried the enchants forward, and those who hadn’t could no longer do so.
Is was also in the BC days that players started experimenting with game-mechanic-breaking exploits. While I’ll not go into much detail on the “how” on this subject, exploits became the new “underground” method of gaining an advantage over other PvPers. The exploits came in two overall flavors: in-game bug exploits and gaining additional gear enhancements with creative “work-arounds” in the game’s soulbinding mechanic. Some twinks took a page form the Naxx shoulder inscriptions handbook, applying powerful Aldor/Scryer rep-based inscriptions onto low-level white shoulders and breaking the game’s soulbinding mechanics in order to mail these powerful shoulders to their twinks. PvP-specific head inscriptions, available from Shattered Sun rep shortly followed. Others found undocumented bugs, such as the now infamous no-level requirement Enti's Quenched Sword that offered twinks high, undocumented damage (the Tooltip showed 2-3 damage, but the reality was it had a damage range of 2-273) and the ability to accept BC weapon enchants, making this two-hander exceptionally deadly. It was during this time that twinks first started to see characters and accounts banned for their experimenting with head and shoulder enchantments.
In these days of twinking, there were more and more complaints about equality and cost of creating twinks to compete in the lower brackets. Popular opinion was starting to turn against twinks, seeing them as overpowered bullies that like to grief any non-twink that entered a BG. Whilel this was true for a small minority, most twinks and twinking guilds participated in BG premades and continued to look for increasingly difficult, and ultimately longer, battles.
On the class side, this time was the explosion of the caster classes. No longer Rogues and Hunters dominate the group compositions- Priests, Warlocks and Glass-Cannon Mages became a more frequent sight on the WSG field, forcing long-time players to change tactics and strategies. Additionally, the faction-specific classes were eliminated in this patch, with the horde faction gaining access to the Paladin class and the Alliance seeing their first Shamans in the game. Naturally, these “new” classes were embraced by twinks as twinks, leveling the abilities playing field. Many argue that this was the “Golden Age” of twinking in the 19 bracket because of these wide-sweeping changes.
The Second Expansion, Bind on Account items and Old Tricks on new Twinks
Blizzard’s second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK), had a newly-focused goal for Blizzard: helping players level alternate characters (Alts) faster and more efficiently by offering bind on account (BoA) heirloom items. The twink community saw these new trinkets, weapons and shoulders as a godsend, providing a new best-in-slot item tailored specially for their class. And true to form, creative twinks quickly learned that their old unused Naxx and old-world rep shoulder inscriptions could be applied to these shoulders, again providing an advantage that could not be duplicated as the enchantments where no longer available. Initially it seems that Blizzard had not made the same “mistake” they had with BC leg patches, requiring a level 70 to apply the enchantment, as well as making the item soulbound in the process. The same was true for BoA weapons; or so they thought. Twinks again pushed the limit of creative “work-arounds” and found that these leg patched, as well as poisoned and shaman weapon spell and high-level scopes could be allied to BoE pants and BoA weapons, and mailed back to twinks by breaking the souldbound game mechanic. Additionally, a PvP level 70 shoulder inscription was made available to players, and twinks found that you could apply these shoulder enchants on all BoA shoulders for an incredible advantage. During this early time, it was not uncommon to see level 19 twinks with upwards of 3500 HP fully buffed, facing off leveling 19s with less that 900. BG’s became black and while- either complete steamroll victories or agonizingly long turtle fights of who had the greater will.
The second arguably overpowered feature that WotLK brought was new professions character enhancements and the removal of gathering profession level limits. Blizzard integrated scaling stats (HP increase, a healing-over-time spell and crit rating) to each of the gathering skills to make them more attractive to end-game players. The also removed the previous level requirements, as they felt that the zones would regulate themselves (a 19 in Outlands/Northrend seems inconceivable). Once again, twinks showed their creativity and dedication, leveraging high-level “bodyguards” to protect them while they herbed, skinned and mined their way to 450, and incredibly powerful stats. Additionally, and undocumented mining/Stam bug was first discovered, creating even more confusion as to how twinks were becoming so hard to dispatch. The code somehow was converting the 7 Stam/70HP into 70 Stam, resulting in 700 HP. The last profession shake-up was the newly-created inscriptionist and with them came powerful player-created off-hand weapons with skill requirements like the popular engineering tradeskill. However, unlike the gathering professions, Blizzard quickly took steps to correct this “oversight” and institute level requirements, nullifying their use and infuriating twinks who’d dropped trades like jewelcrafting or engineering to do so.
Then Blizzard took a step that many though would destroy twinking- they removed the ability to use Naxx and rep shoulder inscriptions on BoA shoulders and reinstated the level caps, while grandfathering the items and skills upward. For the first time, super-twinks were in the BG’s that could not be re-created by new players. These grandfathered changes split the twinking community for a time, with many calling for reduction of these powerful, now unattainable advantages, while others took the stance that Blizzard has no right to remove something that a player rightfully earned. Many players even objected to the powerful stats that BoA gear provided that they had no access to without a 80-level character. The PvP shoulder inscription was still viable, and more and more twinks were turning to exploits to gain a perceived “equal ground.” The Hunter class was deemed extremely overpowered with both pet and class mechanic changes, and retribution Paladins, Warriors and Priest became more common on the battlefield.
However change was on the horizon.
Enter Patch 3.1- Everything Old is New Again or Skill>Gear
Blizzard’s 3.1 patch changed all the rules for twinks in the 19 bracket. This patch instituted level requirements for twinking enchantments going all the way back to patch 1.5. All end-game focused leg patches, shoulder inscriptions, profession character enhancements librams, scopes and selected enchantments have effectively been removed from the twink’s tool box by now having level requirements. These level requirements where made retro-active, removing beneficial stats from all applications. For the first time, Blizzard halted its practice of grandfathering item and character enchantments. No area was left untouched; once best-in-slot fishing boots now require level 35; twinks with 450 professions had no access to the bonus stats or abilities. Both exploited gear and BC/WotLK enhanced gear where covered in this wide-spread nerf of twinks.
Many heralded this as the end of twinking; others praised the patch changes for equalizing the lower bracket and re-invigorating the PvP; more still felt a sense of betrayal over time, energy and gold investment becoming instantly unless. But Blizzard was not looking to end twinking with this patch. They, as they always have, remain neutral on the topic of twinking. Or so it seems. Upon further inspection, all new low-level gear has been introduced, and existing stats have been altered that seem to lend themselves to the twinking world. And, best of all, the new level requirements futher removed any unfair advantage left from exploited gear and grandfathered abilitles. Simply put, a twink created three years ago will not out-gear one created yesterday, as it was pre 3.1.
It’s much discussed within the twinking forum as to what the future holds for twinking in the 19s. Many call 3.1 the second coming of the “Golden Age” while others have retired from twinking for other challenges. One thing remains true: Twinking is here to stay in the World of Warcraft, as its shown creativity and elasticity to the class and gear changes.
