Iild
big pwner never small pwn
The Beginnings
I first started twinking back in early BC? (maybe late vanilla idk, bc prepatch? fuck knows) but anyway I got introduced to twinks the same way most people did back then, queueing a BG mid 10s and getting 1shot repeatedly, being inspired to make a toon that powerful, thinking it's class imbalance but then whispering alliance ones asking what the deal is. Not getting a reply because of egos, inspecting them then clocking what it is.
Then you make your toon and start 'gearing' it without researching, no exp lock back then so by the time you work out what bis lists are you're way past the exp 'cap' and can never achieve bis yourself, so it's time for new toon.
Battlegroup Forums
After a while you'd be referred/stumble upon the Battlegroup Forums on the WoW website, you'll soon realise within minutes how toxic and disgusting they are, you'd click on a 'twink' thread (usually 1 thread per bracket where everyone relevant talks) and i'm not exaggerating when I say you'd refresh the page every 5-10mins to see if it got locked by mods yet.That's why if you somehow find old snapshots of the old forums you'd see '16th Magnificent 10-19 Thread' or something along them lines, it wasn't due to reaching post cap, it'd be locked 9/10 times within 3 days.
The level of toxicity has never been seen in twinking since those days, these pictures kind of show this (clicking on any thread brings up an error on a web archive)
Not the best examples but this is just a snapshot from a random day on the battlegroup I was part of (I was mainly playing my warrior Anur back then)
Toxicity ingame
I could list the level of toxicity in BG chat but new legion twinks are taking care of reminding you of that, although you could say it was more personal in battlegroups because everyone knew everyone.
Separation of XPon and XPoff
Wargames
Here's where I can hardly provide enough information as this is where I sat back and decided it wasnt worth the effort, after my experience anyway.Back in WotLK came the patch everybody was unsure about, the rumour mill spun for quite a while before it landed, with everyone unsure what was going to happen, we heard exp was going to be gained in BGs, and for a while that was all we knew, nobody knew about the exp eliminating NPCs for roughly 2-3 weeks so we were all wondering what we're gonna do. Then we heard about the exp eliminating NPCs and everyone got excited for finishing BiS and farming new sets we couldnt have done without levelling, everyone was happy.
Then the patch dropped, we were horrified to find out there was a separation of the bracket, twinks in one bg and levellers in a separate one. A few optimistic people thought 'yeah great we're gonna be all twinks and it'll be like a premade but without communication, we'll be fine'
But for someone who was stuck on a battlegroup with minimal twink population (everyone hopped around through free realm transfers >lol who remembers them< and they were currently off on another battlegroup) we knew what was going to happen, and it did. You either needed to all transfer to a battlegroup everyone on pwndepot had agreed on going to, or reroll and hope your connections could fund you.
Unfortunately back then I was too young to afford a transfer without outside help, and I didn't bother to ask for help (my interest in twinks was falling by then as everyone had jumped ship to another battlegroup 1-2 months prior) and I was enjoying the wotlk endgame hype still.
Although I wish I stayed for it because it seemed enjoyable from playing wotlk 19 private servers.
Then the patch dropped, we were horrified to find out there was a separation of the bracket, twinks in one bg and levellers in a separate one. A few optimistic people thought 'yeah great we're gonna be all twinks and it'll be like a premade but without communication, we'll be fine'
But for someone who was stuck on a battlegroup with minimal twink population (everyone hopped around through free realm transfers >lol who remembers them< and they were currently off on another battlegroup) we knew what was going to happen, and it did. You either needed to all transfer to a battlegroup everyone on pwndepot had agreed on going to, or reroll and hope your connections could fund you.
Unfortunately back then I was too young to afford a transfer without outside help, and I didn't bother to ask for help (my interest in twinks was falling by then as everyone had jumped ship to another battlegroup 1-2 months prior) and I was enjoying the wotlk endgame hype still.
Although I wish I stayed for it because it seemed enjoyable from playing wotlk 19 private servers.
Wargames
In early cata I was dissatisfied with the class and game changes as were a lot of players, I knew 19s were dead as hell on EU (did we still have battlegroups then idk, that might've been why)
but what caught my attention was Wargames, I saw the potential there, as did plenty others. You could set up guild vs guilds without having to spend ages trying to both get the pop at same time and having to use external communications to coordinate it, one click and you're queued.
So I trawled through forums and the luckiest thing I stumbled across was a revival of the 20-29 EU scene right on my actual realm I had mained for the last 5 years, I jumped at it.
It took us 5-6 weeks to get our first pop after pushing for activity and realm transfers, we had the biggest names in 29s from back then at their peak.
I can say with no shadow of a doubt they were the first wargames 29 had seen, possibly even the first guild vs guild EU had seen.
I'd count that as my first taste of competitive twinking in the sense that tbc/wotlk was way too slow to be called competitive in comparison to Cata.
We had those guild vs guild wargames and I thoroughly enjoyed it, even the amount of toxicity it caused in voice comms and guild chat if someone messed up.
Guess how many quit due to it? 0.
Do you know why nobody quit?
If they quit, they effectively ended their twinks.
You could log on them sure, but good luck getting games when random queues are dead.
Wargaming back then was short lived as it was too hard to coordinate setting up games due to lack of player pool (everyone was still under the impression twinking was dead since exp lock, on my battlegroup anyway. I'm sure only the battlegroup everyone migrated to was active) and so we enjoyed about 2-3months of playing wargames one day a week for 3-4 hours.
I quit the whole game when Mop was released, dabbled in wod a bit then came back in Legion to actually playing more than an hour a day.
So I trawled through forums and the luckiest thing I stumbled across was a revival of the 20-29 EU scene right on my actual realm I had mained for the last 5 years, I jumped at it.
It took us 5-6 weeks to get our first pop after pushing for activity and realm transfers, we had the biggest names in 29s from back then at their peak.
I can say with no shadow of a doubt they were the first wargames 29 had seen, possibly even the first guild vs guild EU had seen.
I'd count that as my first taste of competitive twinking in the sense that tbc/wotlk was way too slow to be called competitive in comparison to Cata.
We had those guild vs guild wargames and I thoroughly enjoyed it, even the amount of toxicity it caused in voice comms and guild chat if someone messed up.
Guess how many quit due to it? 0.
Do you know why nobody quit?
If they quit, they effectively ended their twinks.
You could log on them sure, but good luck getting games when random queues are dead.
Wargaming back then was short lived as it was too hard to coordinate setting up games due to lack of player pool (everyone was still under the impression twinking was dead since exp lock, on my battlegroup anyway. I'm sure only the battlegroup everyone migrated to was active) and so we enjoyed about 2-3months of playing wargames one day a week for 3-4 hours.
I quit the whole game when Mop was released, dabbled in wod a bit then came back in Legion to actually playing more than an hour a day.
So what's the point of this thread?
The point of this thread is to explain my experiences with toxicity, and why on a personal level I believe I know why we're at this situation.
We're at this situation not due to toxicity which a lot of people are way to quick to point at, we're effectively back to TBC/WotLK where the knowledge of twinks being back with levellers has led to a lot of new players making twinks without any knowledge of the bracket, most new twinks probably never knew twinking never died, probably never knew what we had to do to keep it alive, they just make fotms and GY camp with speed pots, no passion for the community.
They don't want competitive games, they probably don't know it exists and would scoff at the idea.
You all say we're driving them out of the competitive scene, but I watch every single stream of plebmades and it's the same names every time (not out of exclusion of new twinks, it can sometimes take 2 hours to fill slots), they just have no knowledge/desire to have competitive games.
So don't go around blaming toxicity for TC dying, the option for pugs with levellers killed TC.
Wargames were introduced to the bracket to save it when we had no other option to play.
Yes pugs existed, not consistently for a long time and definitely not in every bracket.
Another factor to TC dying is due to the lackluster gameplay and customization legion offers, not to mention the pruning of abilities to the point where mid fights could easily be replaced with a training dummy and it'd look the same.
This caused a lot of people to either quit/reduce activity at 19s or just quit the game completely, reducing the pool of old twinks knowing the importance/value of wargames.
We're at this situation not due to toxicity which a lot of people are way to quick to point at, we're effectively back to TBC/WotLK where the knowledge of twinks being back with levellers has led to a lot of new players making twinks without any knowledge of the bracket, most new twinks probably never knew twinking never died, probably never knew what we had to do to keep it alive, they just make fotms and GY camp with speed pots, no passion for the community.
They don't want competitive games, they probably don't know it exists and would scoff at the idea.
You all say we're driving them out of the competitive scene, but I watch every single stream of plebmades and it's the same names every time (not out of exclusion of new twinks, it can sometimes take 2 hours to fill slots), they just have no knowledge/desire to have competitive games.
So don't go around blaming toxicity for TC dying, the option for pugs with levellers killed TC.
Wargames were introduced to the bracket to save it when we had no other option to play.
Yes pugs existed, not consistently for a long time and definitely not in every bracket.
Another factor to TC dying is due to the lackluster gameplay and customization legion offers, not to mention the pruning of abilities to the point where mid fights could easily be replaced with a training dummy and it'd look the same.
This caused a lot of people to either quit/reduce activity at 19s or just quit the game completely, reducing the pool of old twinks knowing the importance/value of wargames.
The Solution?
Do I have a foolproof solution? no.
Do I have an idea? no.
The only solution I can give to old members is, give more respect in plebmades if and when they happen, don't AFK games if someone's being toxic. Man up, mute the person, get swapped to other team, ask for them to get swapped to the other team and carry the duck on, it's a competitive environment what do you expect to happen?
Remind yourself in Plebs that this is the best thing that's currently happening in the bracket, the alternative is queueing pugs and getting farmed by a 5 man FOTM comp with full buffs/consumables/gliders, or queueing into a 5man from your faction doing the same.
Do I have an idea? no.
The only solution I can give to old members is, give more respect in plebmades if and when they happen, don't AFK games if someone's being toxic. Man up, mute the person, get swapped to other team, ask for them to get swapped to the other team and carry the duck on, it's a competitive environment what do you expect to happen?
Remind yourself in Plebs that this is the best thing that's currently happening in the bracket, the alternative is queueing pugs and getting farmed by a 5 man FOTM comp with full buffs/consumables/gliders, or queueing into a 5man from your faction doing the same.
New Users - Look Here
If you're looking to join the competitive scene but are put off by the way it is right now (idk why)
Build your guild, form it with people you like and connect with. That way you can't complain about toxicity in the bracket. It'd be on you and your guild.
After you formed your roster, head over to https://xpoff.com/threads/the-nineteen-wargaming-scene-activity-and-growth.73630/
Give Dan or Buns a PM, i'm sure they'll be happy to help, connect with other new guilds and premade them in a friendly environment.
There's literally no reason to not do this, 0 'toxicity', 0 pressure, learning the battleground in a semi-competitive scene.
Do this for a while and you can easily compete in Twink Cups without 'embarassing' yourself.
I say embarass yourself because that's the word the lovely Conq said about new users not joining Twink Cup.
