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Twink

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Twinks are player characters who have gained the best powerful gear for their level with enhancements such as expensive weapon enchants, leg patches and BoE/BoP greens, blues or epics. Twinks are mainly used in PvP fighting and Battlegrounds. Twinks obtain their items through rare drops, drops off of bosses in instances, rewards from quests that are difficult to complete at their level, and from the Auction House. Twink items on the Auction House can be expensive. Twink enchantments can only be performed by high-level characters. Therefore, twinking usually requires significant assistance from high-level alts, friends, and/or guild members. However, there are examples of self-made twinks that generate the necessary gold from Auction House trading or other in-game methods.

Twinking is common in MMORPGs, including World of Warcraft, though many mechanisms are in place that limit a player's ability to equip a character with gear beyond its level. Although Blizzard remains neutral on the subject and has confirmed that they neither endorse nor oppose twinking, the topic continues to be very controversial in the game. While some argue that twinking a character requires considerable effort and is a legitimate goal and facet of game-play, some argue that twinking is an inappropriate use of gold, and that they have an unfair advantage against regular players in PVP. Levels of twinks and "twinking" in World of Warcraft are commonly associated with PVP brackets for battlegrounds. The common rationalization is that "they just stop leveling."

Contents

Examples

Examples of twinking include
  • Having a high-level character provide uncommon, rare, or epic Bind on Equip items to a low level character, or the gold to purchase those items,
  • Having a high-level character farm an instance or accomplish high level quest chains with a lower-level character for the sole purpose of getting some items; The higher level character has no need for the gear, leaving all gear up for grabs by the lower level character, who can simply sell what he does not want and use the resulting gold.
  • Enchanting or applying arcana to a low-level character's equipment with bonuses that require large amounts of gold or high-level materials.
  • Sending massive bulks of ingredients to a low level character so it can power level its professions, in particular Engineering and Blacksmithing, which allows the creation and use of equipment without level requirements.
  • Also leveling their fishing skill up to 150 and using shiny baubles to raise it to 225 and fish in Stranglethorn Vale in the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza for a Hat and Boots.

Twinking is most often done in order for a level character to compete in the battleground bracket. Two popular classes for twinks in World of Warcraft are rogues and hunters. Hunters do well in battlegrounds, especially at low levels since many melee classes have no way to stop a hunter who can kite. Their damage is largely affected by the gear they have, so they can go above and beyond what other classes could twink to.

Game design

World of Warcraft has several mechanisms in place to reduce twinking, including:

  • Minimum level requirements to use or equip items.
  • Minimum level requirements to do quests and thus receive quest reward items.
  • Minimum level requirements for potions, buffs and healing spells.
  • Minimum level requirements to advance in professions.
  • Minimum level requirements on enchantments in the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansion (new enchants have an item level requirement of 35/60 respectivley).
  • Binding of items on pickup or use to prevent "hand-me-downs."

Noticeably absent from this list is a minimum level requirement for pre-Burning Crusade enchantments and Arcana.

On the flip side, patch 2.3 was arguably the best pro-twink patch in WoW history, encouraging players to solo level (by reducing the experience needed to do so) and increasing experience awarded, while at the same time upgrading most or all dungeon loot and even adding in an epic ring requiring level 29, the high end of one of the popular twink brackets.

Starting with patch 2.2, Blizzard is adding gear as a factor in matching BG groups/players, so twinked players will be more likely to face twinks and characters passing through a given level will be more likely to face others like themselves. Also, max level raid geared players will tend to get opponents in epics and casual players in green/blue gear will face gear similar to their own.

Future of Twinks

In patch 3.2.0, a feature was introduced that allowed players to cease experience gains in exchange for 10g. Battlegrounds were then altered to force xp-off characters to face only other xp-off characters. Battleground XP was enabled for all other characters.


While a small minority of twinks have been calling for this change for quite some time, this change came as a great nerf to the future of twinking. The wait time for each battleground game is now significantly longer for many of the higher level brackets, if any games happen at all. Some twinks have resorted to creating "destination" battlegroups for specific level range twinking. Ruin for example, is almost universally regarded as the designated 49 Twinking battlegroup.


A large majority of twink players have quit their twinks because they can no longer play them due to the lack of non-XP battlegrounds.

Twinking resources

Class-based

General or topic-based


See also

External links

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