Friday, August 7, 2009

Twinks in 3.2

With the release of Warcraft patch 3.2, Blizzard introduced experience gains to the battlegrounds. To assuage players with Twinks, exceptionally well geared lower level characters who remain indefinitely at the highest level of a battleground's bracket, Blizzard also introduced a system whereby players could suspend all experience gains for the low price of 10 gold. This change was a boon to twinks as they could farm their gear and participate in battlegrounds without fear of leveling up into a new bracket.

Unfortunately for twinks, with the benefits of suspended experience gains came segregated battlegrounds. Since 3.2, all players looking to enter a battleground are separated into two pools: those with experience gains on and those with them off. This prevents twinks from dominating everyone in the battlegrounds, but at the cost of exceptionally long ques for twinks who must wait for an entire battleground full of other twinks to engage in PvP. This has led to many complaints from voracious twinkers.

In my observation, players with twinks have offered two reasons that the 3.2 battlegrounds changes are unfair. First, their twinks can no longer roll over a battleground full of non-twinks. Second, they must now wait hours to join a battleground. As for the first complaint, I have no sympathy. Twinks completely ruin the battleground experience for anyone but other twinks. Even where levels are equal, a twink will generally blow up a non-twink with minimal effort and next to no chance of reprisal. For players on the lower end of the battleground level span, its was simply a game of preparing to be two shot repeatedly. Though this might be fun for the twinks, it is fun at the expense of other players, largely new players who Blizzard has a reasonable interest in protecting.

As for the second complaint, it is certainly a legitimate issue. Fortunately, I believe it is a problem which will work itself out in time. With the arrival of Call of the Crusade, there are many new things to experience. Lower level players have enhanced access to mounts, there are four new instances to explore, Emblems of Conquest are now easy to farm, and there are new dailies to do. Odds are, most players have thrown themselves headlong into this new content and it will take a while for the "new stuff" shine to fade. Once that happens, however, it is likely that players will return their attention to their twinks and the que times will drop.

Obviously, that is not a quick fix for players who want to immediately start flexing their twink muscles. It is my opinion, however, that the ends of this change justify its means and the result of more fair battlegrounds is well worth the current growing pains. Obviously reasonable minds might differ, but I think all but the most predatory of twinks should ultimately appreciate the change.

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