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The evolution of Twinking 2004-2014: An Argument for the 19s bracket.
Logging on my server, I see a realm with a history of greatness. From Vanilla to Wrath Argent Dawn has tackled PvE, PvP, RP, and even Twinking. Since Vanilla of 2004 when I rolled my first 29 twink toon because I got bored of leveling, it did not take long for others to take onto the concept. Between 2004 and 2011 I saw countless twink guilds. Early on twinking gained substantial popularity when Cross Realm battlegrounds came out, it was revolutionary. This was a total change in the PvP dynamic for twinks. When one or two geared players were heralded as the hero’s of the bracket, now they had other heroes to contend with, things where not so easy, people had to adapt, to hone their skills, to find better gear, to get better enchants, to group up with better players. TBC was out and twinking was alive in every bracket, we got a bad rep from average low level players going through the process of attaining max level. We would annihilate them in battlegrounds with max level enchants on Ultra rare weapons, it was sort of sadistic on our part - in retrospect.
At this point on Argent Dawn There were multiple active and powerful twink guilds there was “We Love Pie” on alliance along with “Abbey of The Blessed Keg”, on horde there was the fearsome “NO MERCY” who eventually took over the 19s Ruin battlegroup. Skilled players from high levels would be transferring their twinks to our server to play with us, we were scheduling 10v10 warsongs against other twink guilds! This wasn’t only happening in Ruin tho, In Cyclone Pizza Hut was a dominant force, and those where just the two most popular. Guilds like Crush Ridge Legends, Meat Puppet, Make Your Time, Dead On Arrival, Mayhem, and Border Patrol where also there, and that doesn’t come close to listing them all.
Then Wrath of The Lich King launched and if you thought the change in TBC was huge, this was groundbreaking. All the sudden, new zones, stormwind updated, twinks leveled from all sorts of reasons. From Battlegrounds that now gave XP, rediscovering zones, Arenas where gone, guilds died, twinking was declared dead, surely this would be a killing blow to those who prey on low levels like twinks. Yet Twinking didn’t die entirely, there were people who hung on, and although the community was a shadow of it’s former self it, persevered through this twinkocide that was unleashed upon it, and over time it continued to grow. The XP vendors were added, and BoA’s where as well, this meant even better gear, and battlegrounds where only other players with their XP off would be involved, an all out Twink Battleground. Guilds started popping back up, then in Cata Free to Plays got added to our XP off Battle Grounds, this was highly controversial, on one hand the 20-24 bracket activity absolutely skyrocketed, on the other you had geared 24 twinks slaughtering weaker players again, it is reminiscent of XP off BGs. Either way Twinking once more had a foothold with frequent Que Pops for Battlegrounds. MoP came out and 24s was on fire! 5 minute WSG pops with guilds everywhere, Holy Crit was a monolith. The first guild to bring twinking mainstream, they bragged outrageous numbers - by far the largest twink guild to have ever existed. People came all over with the promise of a funded Twink and the ability to play in massive tournaments, the horde dominated all BG’s and alliance would get slaughtered consistently, although some guilds tried to fight back none were capable of slowing them down.
I decided to Create SCC (Sneer of Cold Command) on Argent Dawn, as a seasoned Twink myself who had created Twink Guilds in the past I felt I had the resources and experience to lead a counter-offensive and strengthen the Alliance Faction, and bring Twinking back to Argent Dawn. I achieved this to some extent, as a newer guild we had enormous success and thrived, rapidly. We were the new kids on the block, people trash talked us, people liked us, people thanked us, people trolled us, people challenged us, and people joined us. Now for the first time in years, twinking had premade capable guilds on both sides. This was huge for the community. Now Warlords of Draenor is out and things have been turned up a notch yet again, and yet again Twinks are showing a remarkable ability to adapt to whatever is thrown at us, because we love this style of game play, we will make it work, no matter what. Now funding new twinks is very difficult, people want BiS gear (Best in Slot) which means they require enchants for their necks, rings, and cloak, the new WoD ones are so expensive it is impractical to sustain consistent funding for even dedicated players such as myself.
However, Arenas are back and the brackets are 10 levels again. 29s BGs and Arenas pop consistently. 19s have popped most nights this week will a strong community outreach presence. So people go to 29s a lot more, but they are plagued with what is known to some as the “F2P Problem”. This is issue is riddled with grey area, basically Hardcore F2Ps spend huge amounts of effort on their level 20s, which is highly commendable, but they que into battlegrounds with 29s who do the same and are forced to rely on scaling and organization for viability, which they do exceedingly well. Obviously this has created a significant amount of Animosity between the F2P and the rest of the bracket's twink community. Often times games result in having so many F2P’s on one side that a match comes down too who has more 29s, and that is not fun for anyone, it gets old quick, as it did in the 24s bracket, premades made it tolerable, as I imagine Arenas will now as well. Yet imagine would happen if all these 29s who are playing, a large portion of whom also have geared level 19s dusted off their toons, and started Qing, you would have Legitimate Random Battlegrounds, Massive Activity, Arenas, Premade capable guild son both sides, and a strong community for the first time in Twink History. This would be even better than the Glory days of TBC, the only thing preventing it are players in the 20-29s bracket who are queuing against gimped players. 19s is a more balanced, and viable bracket. We have shown ourselves capable of Organizing War Games, Guilds, Premades, Arenas, and WSG nights, and massive events most importantly we need ACTIVE twinks to step up to the plate on Bleeding Hollow Horde, Skill Ratio is great but they are not active, they cannot lead the faction for that reason. Someone needs to offer the dozens of Twinks on BH horde a home, it would not be hard to accomplish, SCC will premade any 19 team. There is no better time than now to get invested in your 19s again, so this is a challenge to ALL twinks, if you have a 19, or have ever thought of making one, even if you haven't, there has NEVER been a better time in the history of WoW to roll a 19 twink, the bracket is already growing and if people understand that they can finally make a difference in the twink community and bring Twinking full force into the spotlight once and for all, we can do huge things. The time is now, mobilize, make guilds, network, organize, use twink item collections like I did to support guilds, be apart of the movement! We Que every day at 8 PM EST, sharp be there and make WoW History.
See my signature for more info.
Speed enchants stacking also making not having mounts very tolerable.
At this point on Argent Dawn There were multiple active and powerful twink guilds there was “We Love Pie” on alliance along with “Abbey of The Blessed Keg”, on horde there was the fearsome “NO MERCY” who eventually took over the 19s Ruin battlegroup. Skilled players from high levels would be transferring their twinks to our server to play with us, we were scheduling 10v10 warsongs against other twink guilds! This wasn’t only happening in Ruin tho, In Cyclone Pizza Hut was a dominant force, and those where just the two most popular. Guilds like Crush Ridge Legends, Meat Puppet, Make Your Time, Dead On Arrival, Mayhem, and Border Patrol where also there, and that doesn’t come close to listing them all.
Then Wrath of The Lich King launched and if you thought the change in TBC was huge, this was groundbreaking. All the sudden, new zones, stormwind updated, twinks leveled from all sorts of reasons. From Battlegrounds that now gave XP, rediscovering zones, Arenas where gone, guilds died, twinking was declared dead, surely this would be a killing blow to those who prey on low levels like twinks. Yet Twinking didn’t die entirely, there were people who hung on, and although the community was a shadow of it’s former self it, persevered through this twinkocide that was unleashed upon it, and over time it continued to grow. The XP vendors were added, and BoA’s where as well, this meant even better gear, and battlegrounds where only other players with their XP off would be involved, an all out Twink Battleground. Guilds started popping back up, then in Cata Free to Plays got added to our XP off Battle Grounds, this was highly controversial, on one hand the 20-24 bracket activity absolutely skyrocketed, on the other you had geared 24 twinks slaughtering weaker players again, it is reminiscent of XP off BGs. Either way Twinking once more had a foothold with frequent Que Pops for Battlegrounds. MoP came out and 24s was on fire! 5 minute WSG pops with guilds everywhere, Holy Crit was a monolith. The first guild to bring twinking mainstream, they bragged outrageous numbers - by far the largest twink guild to have ever existed. People came all over with the promise of a funded Twink and the ability to play in massive tournaments, the horde dominated all BG’s and alliance would get slaughtered consistently, although some guilds tried to fight back none were capable of slowing them down.
I decided to Create SCC (Sneer of Cold Command) on Argent Dawn, as a seasoned Twink myself who had created Twink Guilds in the past I felt I had the resources and experience to lead a counter-offensive and strengthen the Alliance Faction, and bring Twinking back to Argent Dawn. I achieved this to some extent, as a newer guild we had enormous success and thrived, rapidly. We were the new kids on the block, people trash talked us, people liked us, people thanked us, people trolled us, people challenged us, and people joined us. Now for the first time in years, twinking had premade capable guilds on both sides. This was huge for the community. Now Warlords of Draenor is out and things have been turned up a notch yet again, and yet again Twinks are showing a remarkable ability to adapt to whatever is thrown at us, because we love this style of game play, we will make it work, no matter what. Now funding new twinks is very difficult, people want BiS gear (Best in Slot) which means they require enchants for their necks, rings, and cloak, the new WoD ones are so expensive it is impractical to sustain consistent funding for even dedicated players such as myself.
However, Arenas are back and the brackets are 10 levels again. 29s BGs and Arenas pop consistently. 19s have popped most nights this week will a strong community outreach presence. So people go to 29s a lot more, but they are plagued with what is known to some as the “F2P Problem”. This is issue is riddled with grey area, basically Hardcore F2Ps spend huge amounts of effort on their level 20s, which is highly commendable, but they que into battlegrounds with 29s who do the same and are forced to rely on scaling and organization for viability, which they do exceedingly well. Obviously this has created a significant amount of Animosity between the F2P and the rest of the bracket's twink community. Often times games result in having so many F2P’s on one side that a match comes down too who has more 29s, and that is not fun for anyone, it gets old quick, as it did in the 24s bracket, premades made it tolerable, as I imagine Arenas will now as well. Yet imagine would happen if all these 29s who are playing, a large portion of whom also have geared level 19s dusted off their toons, and started Qing, you would have Legitimate Random Battlegrounds, Massive Activity, Arenas, Premade capable guild son both sides, and a strong community for the first time in Twink History. This would be even better than the Glory days of TBC, the only thing preventing it are players in the 20-29s bracket who are queuing against gimped players. 19s is a more balanced, and viable bracket. We have shown ourselves capable of Organizing War Games, Guilds, Premades, Arenas, and WSG nights, and massive events most importantly we need ACTIVE twinks to step up to the plate on Bleeding Hollow Horde, Skill Ratio is great but they are not active, they cannot lead the faction for that reason. Someone needs to offer the dozens of Twinks on BH horde a home, it would not be hard to accomplish, SCC will premade any 19 team. There is no better time than now to get invested in your 19s again, so this is a challenge to ALL twinks, if you have a 19, or have ever thought of making one, even if you haven't, there has NEVER been a better time in the history of WoW to roll a 19 twink, the bracket is already growing and if people understand that they can finally make a difference in the twink community and bring Twinking full force into the spotlight once and for all, we can do huge things. The time is now, mobilize, make guilds, network, organize, use twink item collections like I did to support guilds, be apart of the movement! We Que every day at 8 PM EST, sharp be there and make WoW History.
See my signature for more info.
Speed enchants stacking also making not having mounts very tolerable.
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