I was gonna give ZenwOw grief for necro'ing a thread so I could use that as an excuse to post, and lo and behold, it's Jadyn who did the dastardly deed! Does Jadyn get double points for necro'ing himself as well? ...Good to see you, Jadyn!
I started twinking in 2.3, and the spell damage/healing merge into spell power for 2.4 along with the battlegrounds server merge (into battlegroups) opened a lot of doors. I really enjoyed playing 29s and 39s during 2.4 on BG9/Bloodlust. If I had to choose, that probably counts for my favorite twinking time, because everything was so new and amazing.
With that said, every bracket brings some great moments in my memories.
People talk about how the 3.2 XP-off patch ruined twinking, but I'm here to tell you some of the best community-building work to ever happen in twinking, came from that change. Rampage 29s, Nightfall 39s, Ruin 49s and Ruin 59s worked hard to get their games, and for all of its challenges, Wrath remains the favorite of many midbracket players.
Cata was terrible in a lot of ways, but the 70-74 bracket became a shining exception. Yes, other brackets found a way to make things work, but the constant feuding between old-school and new-school twinks made things really toxic.
MoP took twinks through so many scaling changes. I'll admit that 80-84 was fun, but it was even more bursty than 49s, and that's saying a lot. However,
@Chops finally talked me and
@youbeezy into trying F2P, and I'll be daggone, it was the best twinking experience we had in MoP. All credit to Kochi and the community he assembled on Korgath. F2P was really strong at that time, with crews on Aerie Peak and...what was the server that started with a V that had the other large F2P population? Vek'nilash or something like that?
I don't remember much about WoD, and stat templates in Legion demonstrated how much OP gearing really did matter to the twinks. BfA provided some fun reunion opportunities while Blizzard kept queues integrated.
I have really high hopes for Shadowlands. Over the course of 2021, I think it could make unexpected twink history.