get rid of twinking in battlegrounds ASAP
Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2026 10:10 pm
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
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