get rid of twinking in battlegrounds ASAP

[Nandieb]

I am currently leveling my third character to 60, first time leveling since August though, and I have to say, I am shocked how leveling battlegrounds have developed and it's to a degree that is harmful to your product (the server).

After having leveled largely through battlegrounds now at almost 60 again, I can say the issue is getting progressively worse from bracket to bracket, with the 50-59 bracket being the worst.

I know, twinking has always been a matter of debate, but Turtle/Octo has created a unique environment that benefits twinking more than the pure vanilla game.

Why twinking is problematic
It is inherently an anti-social playstyle that is frowned upon by the majority of players. Let's be generous, we are talking about less than or at max 1% of the server's population that engages in this playstyle.
I am sure you have numbers on what percentage of the player base engages in pvp or battlegrounds, but even if that number is as low as 10 or 20%, we are still talking about a 10 to 20:1 ratio of players being negatively affected by this playstyle and players being positively affected by this playstyle. I dare you to do serverwide poll on twinking to get a grasp of how much the larger playerbase detests it.

Twinking itself, is the act of trying to stack an insurmountable advantage in a competetive game mode (battlegrounds), by locking your experience and acquiring perfect gear without slipping out of the bracket, which self-evidently worsens the gaming experience of a competetive game. This is clear as day across our society, as we can see in sports for example, professional atheletes to not engage with amateurs, as it would be seen as a frustrating experience for both.
This is where the anti-social part of twinking comes into play: you might say that twinks are looking for competition among themselves. This is true for only a very small sub-group among this community! As I have seen again and again through my leveling journey, these players actively group up. I dare you to look at the numbers, winrates of factions across brackets, numbers of twinks per faction per bracket. They are all completely lopsided. The only possible equalizer in this scenario is, when one faction becomes so dominant, the other one stops queueing and the overflow from the dominant factions lands in the opposite team. That's the only thing we got right now that prevents breaking 100% of leveling battleground games.

Proof that twinking is anti-social and harmful to the server
The commonly accepted motivations to engage in battlegrounds are:
competetive game mode, challenge of skill
grinding gear
grinding ranks
grinding experience

So I laid out to you why I think competetive gameplay is not a driving motivation for the vast majority of twinks. They have their experience gain turned off by definition. In most brackets, ranks are capped quite low and there is barely any viable pvp gear availale to twinks.
So what remains, if none of these apply? It is to derive joy from actively worsening the game experience of other players, which is in literally every other context of this game is synonymous with griefing, but for some reason we are afraid to call it out as such in battlegrounds.
In fact, if I wanted to actively harm a server with allowed methods, I would just make twinks for every leveling bracket.


Why this server provides a uniquely benefitting environment for twinks
We have experience from battlegrounds here, which is an incentive to play battlegrounds while leveling and can be a huge point of attraction to the server, because I know that there is a large community of players that enjoys this style of leveling very much as an alternative to grinding and questing. Unlike in vanilla where leveling battlegrounds are a pure diversion from leveling, here they can be viable way to level up which attracts more players to them, which in turn benefits twinking because there are more other players affected by your playstyle, which I'd argue is an inherent goal of twinking.



possible solutions
So instead of enabling anti-social griefing playstyles, we should try to improve the game experience for the majority of the players. Here are some easy fixes:

Make it impossible to queue into a battleground if you have experience gain disabled. You can still optimize your character for battlegrounds, but you will naturally move on from the bracket. Players that prefer leveling battlegrounds over the ones at level 60 can just start again after they reached 60.

Make battleground teams fully random instead of the current spill over matchmaking, where one faction that has less players queued receives players from the opposing faction. This would at least force twink vs twink matchups instead of the current situatio of twink teams vs leveler teams.


Please, take a look at the numbers: winrates, number of actual twinks, faction balance, and do a poll if necessary. A regular battleground in the 50-59 bracket is one team afking out at the start

[Vectorus511]

Devs have already done a great job of destroying Bgs. Thanks for 50%exp nerf... And now you're suggesting to remove twinks from the Battlegrounds, which will lead to even longer queues. Thank you very much, but I'd rather play with twinks than wait 2 hours in que.
I don't think twinks are a problem, except when they que BG in a premade group. If you want to be effective in PvP, you need to invest some resources and time. Buy some green gear on the auction house, lvlup your engineering, buy cheap healing potions, and you'll be fine. I leveled up 5 characters on BGS on Ambershire and I didn't have a single enchant except Armor Kits. It was enjoyable.
I'd rather get rid of all those useless creatures that enter BGs without a mount or PvP trinket at level 50 and equipped with 30lvl gear. They cannot even hit enemies with spells due to the level difference. They're too lazy to go through a couple of dungeons or level up a PvP profession, but they always have the energy to whine on the forums. Just look at this huge wall of text...

[Ius]

It's annoying for sure, when leveling I try to que close to the end of the BG level range but even then the twinks destroy. It's ok if they balance each other out but if you have a bunch of lowbies in your group vs a twink you might as well /afk

Don't think it will change though as leveling BGs are rare as it is.

[Nandieb]

Devs have already done a great job of destroying Bgs. Thanks for 50%exp nerf... And now you're suggesting to remove twinks from the Battlegrounds, which will lead to even longer queues. Thank you very much, but I'd rather play with twinks than wait 2 hours in que.
I don't think twinks are a problem, except when they que BG in a premade group. If you want to be effective in PvP, you need to invest some resources and time. Buy some green gear on the auction house, lvlup your engineering, buy cheap healing potions, and you'll be fine. I leveled up 5 characters on BGS on Ambershire and I didn't have a single enchant except Armor Kits. It was enjoyable.
I'd rather get rid of all those useless creatures that enter BGs without a mount or PvP trinket at level 50 and equipped with 30lvl gear. They cannot even hit enemies with spells due to the level difference. They're too lazy to go through a couple of dungeons or level up a PvP profession, but they always have the energy to whine on the forums. Just look at this huge wall of text...

This is wrong! I know for a fact that MANY players actively avoid queueing because of twinks, or stop queuing if they run into them

[Fb]

This is wrong! I know for a fact that MANY players actively avoid queueing because of twinks, or stop queuing if they run into them

I agree, that’s exactly how it is. This state of affairs hinders the majority, especially at low levels.

[Nandieb]

This is wrong! I know for a fact that MANY players actively avoid queueing because of twinks, or stop queuing if they run into them

I agree, that’s exactly how it is. This state of affairs hinders the majority, especially at low levels.

that's exactly it! if the playstyle/behaviour of a small group of people leads to a larger group of people not taking part in part of your content, that's harmful to the server

[Moonswallow]

Twinks are a problem, I don't understand how that's even debatable.
They are a cancer that takes everything for itself and suffocates its environment.

[Creolar]

Scrubs are at it again, trying to drag others down to mediocrity. This is why communists still exist - it's just psychological.

[Mathmajor]

1) BGs were never supposed to be there to provide easy xp. The main source for xp is supposed to be questing, not dungeons or BGs. You can increase the xp gained in BGs, but it will destroy the deliberate slow pace of the game (it's predecessor was called Turtle Wow for a reason). Questing is supposed to hurt a little bit and carry some risk of death, mitigated by grouping up and questing, high xp BGs would just encourage players to sit in capital cities and queue BGs. I really enjoy PvP, but this game shouldn't cater only to the desires of PvPers.

2) Twinks have always been an issue on almost every server I have ever played on. I can understand the desire to get rid of twinks, but realistically, if you do that, you will in fact make BG queues longer. I don't agree with the fact that getting rid of them would somehow decrease queue times, because "people don't want to play with twinks." I don't deny that this may in fact disincentivize some people from queueing BGs, but I think you'll find a greater loss of people playing BGs if you get rid of the sizable number of people who enjoy twinking; while it may be argued that it is some sense toxic/anti-social, in all honesty the Wow community has never been a toxic free environment.

3) There may be some solution here, although I am not certain if it is doable within the scope of OctoWow's development teams time or what the technical challenges may be to implement it. i) Scale everyone up in BGs with gear to match the general level of gear (this may present an issue as people come and go within a session though) or ii) make sure to evenly distribute twinks between teams, so that no one team has a completely lopsided advantage in BGs. I think that last one is probably the more doable one from a practical standpoint as well as not disincentivizing twinks to queue (as I mentioned queues would probably be longer without their participation).

4) Again, just to reiterate, I understand the desire to do what is being suggested by the OP, but it simply isn't very feasible from a practical standpoint.

[Moonswallow]

@creolar
I think that's a bad argument. You are implying that most people aim to be twinks and fail at it, which is not true. Arguably at least 90% of people only travel through the low level battleground without any intention of staying there and maximizing their advantages. Calling that 'mediocre twinking' conflates two different activities.
Traveling and settling are two different disciplines.
If you wish to portray twinking as a desirable discipline, I think it would be the most competitive and appropriate to compare Twinks to other Twinks, and travelers to other travelers; and give each their own queue.
If you do not want to be queued with only other twinks, I think you have to admit that the fun from twinking comes from taking advantage of inherently non-competitive players, which is the spirit of griefing. Understandably, if 90% of the player base are getting griefed, they wish to change the system. By the same logic, you could unleash endgame lv60 max geared players on low gear players and get the same result.

Also, what are you rambling about communists and psychology? Do you understand either?