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Warlords of Draenor: Low level PvP balance to be reviewed
PvPers rejoice! Blizzard Community Manager Bashiok has made a post today that is music to our ears. As ever, the whole lengthy ramble is after the break, but let's cherry-pick here for a second. What Bashiok is replying to is a perfectly reasonable post about PvP balance. He starts off with the same thing we're used to hearing, that WoW is a big game, and the devs have to focus their efforts on where the majority of players hang out, which, for PvP, is max level. But then it gets interesting. He confirms that "some" low-level PvP balance will be addressed in Warlords. Some? What does he mean? Well, he continues on to explain that as a part of the ability removal that's going on, the devs are going to be looking at the ability acquisition pacing -- when you get stuff as you level up. At the same time as doing this, and the stat squish, they are going to be doing a pass on low-level balance, looking to ensure that ability damage is more even than it is now. He does add that the lower brackets are inherently somewhat imbalanced, but that the devs' goal is to improve that as they work through the abilities. He also notes that they will be fixing "obvious tuning problems", and doing as much fine-tuning as possible. This is fantastic news for low-level PvPers everywhere! Hit the break for Bashiok's full post.
The fine art of PvE twinking from level 1-35
I'm sure most of you are familiar with the concept of "twinking" in WoW for PvP. It generally entails decking a low-level character out with all the best possible gear available to them and then tearing up the battlefields. In these post-experience locking days twinking is more straightforward than ever, and our own Olivia Grace has already covered a lot of the gearing aspects of twinking, for both PvE and PvP. PvE twinking is a bit of an unusual idea. Mostly it refers to locking experience at one of the former level caps - 60, 70, 80, or 85 - in order to enjoy the challenges of old raids or to accomplish something limited to players of a certain level, such as the Herald of the Titans title. These are fun and interesting ways to spend time in the game, but what about PvE twinking at even lower levels? Say, level 20? Or 40? Why on earth would anyone want to do that?
Will Patch 5.2 kill PvP twinking?
If you weren't paying close attention to the most recent addition to the patch 5.2 PTR notes, you may have missed this little tidbit that was slipped in at the very end, under "Battlegrounds." Blizzard Players in low-level Battlegrounds will have their effective level raised to the maximum level allowed in that Battleground bracket. Players' base stats and spells are scaled accordingly, and are treated as the same level when determining hits, misses, and critical effect chance. source More clarity from Blizzard is definitely needed surrounding this change, and I for one am surprised this didn't make it into their recent PvP blog. It's a huge change, and blithely alters the scene of one small but much-loved section of the PvP game forever. PvP twinking is essentially participating in the lower level brackets of battlegrounds and arenas, often with an XP-locked character, and gearing that character to the highest achievable standard for its level.
Four simple steps to get started with twinking in PvE or PvP
Twinking doesn't have to be about PvP. This common misconception likely emerges because a lot of twinking information sites focus on PvP. But, twinking, while definitely great fun in a PvP context, is prevalent in PvE too. What is twinking? Well, it's simply focusing your gameplay and gearing efforts on a different level than the maximum. Popular PvP twinking levels are based around arena brackets, which are only accessible at certain levels. 70, 80-84 and 85 are the brackets as they stand for arena, and PvE twinking largely follows these brackets. For PvP, there is also the level 19 "bracket", which is hugely active thanks to the free-play accounts. Turning off your XP While not strictly necessary if you're only planning to twink temporarily, this is really important if you want to take your twinking seriously. If you accidentally ding, you're going to bump yourself out of your bracket, and there's no going back. To turn off your XP gains, visit Slahtz for the Horde and Behsten for the Alliance. They're located in Orgrimmar and Stormwind respectively, and will stop you earning XP. Don't worry, though, you can turn XP back on if you change your mind for a few gold. Another approach some might take is to simply not upgrade their account to the next expansion. Since Blizzard changed their character policy to allow players to play any race, not owning expansions beyond Wrath is less restrictive than it used to be, although the monk class will still be unavailable. Edit: Cynwise enlightened us that a recent change means you need XP on for arenas. Don't forget to switch it off again afterwards! Thanks Cynwise!
PvP twinking for dummies
WoW Insider covers the world of player vs. player action in Blood Sport for fans of Battleground, world PvP and Arena play. Steering you to victory is Olivia Grace, who spends most of her time in Azeroth making with the stabby and turning people into frogs. So we're getting to that time in the expansion. People are winding down a bit, relaxing their playstyles, taking a break from raiding after getting their last targets down and killing a certain dragon on whatever mode takes their fancy. So what do you do? Why, PvP! Of course, you can take your beloved max-level main, convert all that valor you don't need after completely gearing yourself in 397s or better into conquest, and get on the PvP train. Your justice points, of course, convert to honor (not at quite such a good rate), and that legendary staff you got when Firelands was still cool will do just fine. Better than fine, in fact. (Grumble, grumble.) But my residual bitterness about PvE gear in PvP is not what we're here to talk about today, nor is max-level PvP conversion. No, my lovely reader, we're here to talk about twinking. What on earth is twinking? Well, it's when people level a character ... then stop. They might lock their XP or just not actively level at max speed for a level or two. In PvP, twinking centers around Battleground brackets and Arena levels, and it's really good fun! First and foremost, you need to know how to lock XP, if you want to. Simply visit Behsten for Alliance or Slahtz for Horde. Bring 10 gold with you. It should be noted that locking XP is definitely not a requirement for twinked PvP! On certain battlegroups (my main battlegroup sadly included), XP-locked Battlegrounds leave you with a wait time that is "undetermined" -- you're not getting in any time soon. Exploits that get you around it are just that -- exploits. Blizzard may well borrow Adam Holisky's Ban Hammer!
Twink Info giving away gifts for Winter Veil
Twink Info, a depository of great information and blogs for twinking out your characters at any level, is giving away some great prizes this season including a 7-inch touchscreen tablet. All you have to do to enter into the drawing is create an account for Twink Info's forums and post a minimum of 15 times before the new year. Learn about twinking out a new alt, how to survive in the Battleground brackets, the best transmog sets for your level, and more, while being entered in a cool competition. Read all about the contest over on Twink Info, and then enter the contest.
15 Minutes of Fame: PvE twinks turn lowbie instances devilishly difficult
From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame. PvP twinking is a fairly well-known, widespread phenomenon in World of Warcraft. The idea is that players stop leveling at the very top of a particular PvP level range bracket, dig in with all the mix-maxed gear and enchants they can muster, and proceed to mop up the battleground kills. Anyone who's run a few battlegrounds on the way up through the levels has encountered that shockingly strong player who tears him a new one. We've even profiled a prolific, multi-level twinker (twinkie?) right here on 15 Minutes of Fame. What you might not be as familiar with -- we weren't! -- is the idea of PvE twinking. Allow us to introduce a hardy band of adventurers on Blackwater Raiders (US-H) that's running each and every instance at the bare minimum level that players are eligible to enter. Ragefire Chasm at level 8? You got it. Deadmines at level 10? Aggro Magnet Central -- but yeah, you got that, too. "It's surprisingly fun playing these classic instances that we've all done hundreds of times at such a low level compared to the mobs," gushes party leader Gilgalad. "It can take hours to clear an instance that typically takes 20 to 30 minutes for an appropriately leveled party. Some of the boss mechanics that are typically a trifle to a normal party become incredibly difficult to deal with when you are 10 levels below the boss. Arugal in Shadowfang Keep was particularly tough and required quite a few attempts before we came up with a strategy that worked."
Waging WAR: Revisiting the new player experience
Waging WAR moves a step backward this week to take a fresh look at the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning new player experience. Greg gives us his take on what he thinks we can expect from the Endless Trial or a Re-enlistment subscription with a new character. He takes us through his experience over a few casual days of play and tells us about the leveling process, scenarios, RvR, twinking and more. Lately, I have spent quite a bit of my time on my rank 40/70 Archmage, focusing on emblem collection and participating in the newly formatted Tier 4 city sieges. Earlier this week, as I considered topics for this weekend's column, I realized that it had been a while since I had experienced the low-level content. Conveniently enough, I was just starting to suffer a bit from healer's burn-out (thanklessly healing day after day can wear a person down), and decided I would take a break and tool around on a lowbie for some fresh kicks and giggles.
Tom Chilton talks about 3.2 and the future of World of Warcraft
Videogamer.com has a nice long interview with World of Warcraft Producer Tom Chilton about everything from patch 3.2 and the Argent Tournament to the future of the game at large. They caught up with him at the Warcraft Regional Finals 2009 tournament in Germany this past week, and in part one, he talks about the upcoming patch and what Blizzard is expecting to get out of it. He says the Isle of Conquest battleground is their most "epic-feeling" instanced PvP setting since Alterac Valley, and that they want it to feel nuts, with players fighting each other via air and land. He also mentions Arena, and says that it was originally designed to be "a fun side PvP activity" that they went a little overboard with during Burning Crusade. Finally, he talks about twinks, and says that neither Blizzard nor twinks, apparently, want to see other players crushed by those who have the time or money to max out their low level characters. Even twinks, says Chilton, want to see competition against each other, and the option to turn XP off will let them do that. I'm not sure I agree with that last one -- many twinks seem to beef their characters up just for the chance to lay waste to "normal" players, but Chilton says Blizzard believes otherwise.The second part of the interview is more general -- he talks a little bit about the next expansion (with the same speculation we've already heard: Gilneas, the Maelstrom, the Emerald Dream), and says that designing a race is tougher on artists, but designing a class is tougher on designers. He admits that because we had a new class in Wrath, it's unlikely we'll see another class so soon in the next expansion, but "not impossible" of course. And he does note that Blizzard tries to "pre-seed" the races before they use them as playable races, so if they are adding in races, chances are we've already seen them (which, you may note, wasn't strictly true with the Draenei in BC). Finally, he talks about the future of Blizzard's MMO in general, and says it's still wide open to them: they plan for the game to last for years, and what they do between now and then, whether that be more expansions, microtransactions, or even a free-to-play model, will have to depend on what they want to do at the time.Very interesting interview. Chilton doesn't really reveal anything, but you do get the sense that save for a very skeleton plan of one or two years in the future, Blizzard is really playing it fast and loose with World of Warcraft. Even he admits that the game may look very different, depending on how things go, in another four years from now.
Twinking post patch 3.1
The twinks were a little doom-and-gloom before the patch, but it seems like the end of the world has come and gone, and they're still interested in twinking. As Drayner over at Twinkinfo predicted, all of the changes on the PTR went live: enchants have level requirements, as did profession buffs, and those aren't scaling either. At this point, it sounds like the only way to twink out your character (which means make it super powerful at a certain low level) is to fit them out in the best gear you can find for the level.If you can keep them at that level, that is -- apparently there's a bug in the game with queuing up for BGs where you are sometimes accidentally transported to a graveyard when you queue. And for some twinks sitting just on the brink of leveling, that extra few points of exploration XP could ruin everything. Be careful with that, though we're sure a hotfix is incoming soon.But nevertheless, people apparently still twinking -- while there are good numbers of people ready to leave twinking (or even the game), the majority of answers on their poll over there say that people are still going to try ruling the lower level battlegrounds. Which is about what we expected before the patch: these people live to bend the rules as far as they'll go, and a few more probably won't stop them.
The state of twinking pre-3.1
Our friend Drayner has posted an open letter to Blizzard over at Twinkinfo.com in which he basically laments the breaking of WoW's twinking game. We've covered twinking quite a few times before here -- it's the game-within-a-game of beefing up lower-level characters to their maximum power using enchants, low-level items, or whatever else they can find. Officially, Blizzard hasn't endorsed or condoned twinking -- if you want to do it, you're free to, but you've got to live with the rules they set on items and enchants, and so forth.And that seems to be Drayner's main issue with Blizzard: they aren't consistent on twinking. They'll make changes that level the twink field, and then they'll ignore bugs that almost completely break it. They kept the latest enchants off of players below level 60, but then they grandfathered in players with the 450 profession buffs. He's got a whole list of changes they've made for and against twinking, and basically asks Blizzard to either support twinking, or (and obviously he's less happy with this decision) end it for good.Unfortunately for him, he probably won't get an answer. There are plenty of players twinking, but not nearly enough for Blizzard to consider making changes based on twinks alone (and while twinks are howling at some of the changes, the rest of the player population either dislikes the whole idea of twinking, or couldn't care either way). And considering that twinking does draw some players into the game, it's not likely Blizzard will ditch it anytime either. Twinks, they would likely say, are playing a meta game already based on made-up rules, so why should it matter that they've also got to abide by other inconsistent rules? Based on what we've heard from them in the past, it seems twinking is a player creation, not a Blizzard creation, so it's up to players to deal with the issues, not Blizzard.
Mysterious twink rends worlds [UPDATED]
Our inbox has been absolutely flooded with reports of this mysterious twink, Aigni of Ner'zhul, that appeared on the official forums in the last 24 hours. If you look closely at his Armory, you'll notice some pretty big oddities. For one, the character is wielding a weapon he really shouldn't be able to have. Two, the character has some other items equipped that are normally far out of the reach of a level 10, such as the Violet Badge. Three, he has the achievement for downing Gruul the Dragonslayer.A lot of people have called 'hax' on it, but how it went down was probably more innocent than that. Not completely, entirely innocent, but more innocent than hacking Blizzard's Gibson. Our first instinct when looking at the items is that he must have simply completed a few bugged quests that had no minimum level requirement. Looking at his achievements killed that theory pretty quickly, though. The sword he's wielding, the Combatant Greatsword, is from a quest in the Borean Tundra. According to his achievements, he's never been to the Borean Tundra.
Insider Trader: Twink gathering controversy, updated
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.Back in patch 3.0.3, you might have missed one of the changes. This one line in the patch notes informed us that leveling requirements to train gathering professions had been removed. The reasoning seemed to be that they are self-restricted, as you can't exactly go romping around Northrend at level 15. The problem with this logic is that you can, in fact, with some help, and this change definitely did not go unnoticed in the twink community. With a little patience and some dedicated high level friends, you too could become a level 19 PvP terror with two of the following buffs; 32 critical strike rating, 500 stamina, and/or an instant cast self-heal for 2000 health over 5 seconds every 3 minutes. The critical strike buff would vary depending on your class, but as an example, a level 19 rogue would gain 10.8% critical strike chance.Understandably, some members of the twink community are none too happy about this development, and would like to see it corrected.
Survey reveals what twinks are all about
This is interesting -- our friend Drayner over at Twinkinfo.com recently took a survey of his site's readers, and after picking up almost 1,000 replies, he's posted the results. They show a little bit of insight into the kind of person that plays a twink (a character maxed out at a certain level before 80, usually to run around in PvP battlegrounds). Specifically, they're male, under 21, play for 21-30 hours a week, think their gear rates a 5 out of 5, and are probably level 19 and in Warsong Gulch capturing flags. I'm not sure if that's suprising or not, but those are pretty safe majority votes, even given the smaller sample size of the poll.Twink players are also more likely to not have more than one account, which kind of makes sense -- they only need one account and just have lots of characters on them. 66% of twinks are actually in twink guilds, and most have at least more than one twink to play around with. Hunters and Rogues top the class choices (though not with a clear majority at all). And perhaps most interesting, over 50% of twinks say Blizzard is serving them just fine -- they're not ignoring them, and they're not giving them any more love than other players. Still, as Drayner pointed out to us, about 36% of twinks said they'd leave the game if Blizzard shut them down with an additional 30% saying Maybe, so Blizzard does have a little incentive there to keep twinking happening.Quite interesting -- twinks might be one of the only groups of players who are completely fine with how they're being handled in game. 2.3 obviously gave them lots of new items to play with, and while there is some frustration from other players, Blizzard has made it so easy to level that if you don't want to play with the twinks at 19, you can move on pretty quickly.
Holy Paladin goggles added in patch 3.0.8
Holy Paladin Engineers can finally rejoice, because patch 3.0.8 is bringing them the goggles that have been oddly missing from Wrath thus far. The highly anticipated Unbreakable Healing Amplifiers are pretty good, and just like the other Northrend goggles, they only require level 72 to wear. While many peoples' mains will outgrow these goggles in 10-man raids, they're perfect for breaking into raids or twinking out an Engineering alt. Along with all the usual Engineering sorts of things, the stats are: Unbreakable Healing Goggles1821 Armor55 Stamina, 60 Intellect1 meta socket, 1 yellow socket87 spell power, 73 crit rating So they're pretty good! But they don't really hold up to raid gear. As for our Feral Druid buddies who also happen to be missing some goggles, I'm not 100% sure if they've opened up the Leather goggles to you yet, but if it hasn't happened yet it probably will. The addition of these goggles shows that they're aware of the problem, at least. If I had a Druid I would hop onto the PTR and take a look, but alas, I do not.[via MMO-Champion]
Forum post of the day: Try a twinkie
Seska of Ysondre has posed the challenge of twinking to players who hate this style of play. She stated that the joy of playing a twink is in planning how to get gear for the effort. To her twinking proves that gear is more important than skill. To do it right, twinking requires considerable time and effort (not to mention cash from higher level characters), but is a valuable experience. Seska is currently a level 16 Shaman, and plans to keep that character as a twink. She was met with agreement by some other twinks, but also a lot of resistance and resentment. Some people say that they have tried twinking and gotten bored with it soon afterward, like playing any other video game with cheat codes. This practice can also be frustrating for other players who would like to battleground as they level up but become demoralized by twinks.
Twinking for my own sanity
I have a lot of alts. Not as many as some, but more than most. I have five level 70s, two characters over 50, and two others that sort of float around depending on what I feel like playing that week. Needless to say, I'm pretty sick of the lower level content. I've done it so many times by now that I'll be very, very happy when I never need to see it again.Until Blizzard decides to let us take a character straight from level 1 to level 70, I'm pretty much stuck going through that content. I enjoy learning to play new characters, but I don't think just grinding out quests does that for you. I would really like a 70 of each class so I can learn how to play them in dungeons and eventually the lower tier raids like Karazhan. Since I can't skip all of that content I've done endlessly already, I try to make my trip to 70 as easy as possible.It was when I started levelling my Frost Mage that I realized just how far I will go to speed up those early levels. About 5 minutes after I rolled that Mage, I equipped her with a set of pre-enchanted gear that gave her just under 100 Frost Damage, and roughly an extra 400 hit points. I was basically invincible, and I loved it. It was expensive, but so worth it to blaze through those first few levels. Taking out moonkin in two Frostbolts was strangely soothing.That's the most money I've put into a brand new character so far, but I would probably do it again in the future just to bypass that really early stuff. My question for all of you is: What's the most you've put into a twink that fresh, just for levelling and not stomping WSG?
Lich King set to introduce "Legacy Items" to World of Warcraft
Last week's explosion of news about Blizzard's in-development Wrath of the Lich King expansion revealed a number of interesting design choices. Overall, the company seems to be refocusing World of Warcraft to a more casual-friendly experience. 5- and 10- man instances will be the main thrust of the endgame, Death Knights offer a viable "leg up" for players wanting to quest with their friends on other servers, and possible plans to offer interesting extensions of the recruit-a-friend service.In an interview with TenTonHammer, Jeff Kaplan and Tom Chilton have revealed that another element will aid this design direction. Certain high level encounters may provide characters with so-called "Legacy Items". These items (weapons and armor, we assume) will bind to your player account - not to your specific character. The items can then transfer between different characters on your account, via the in-game mail system. Intriguingly, it sounds as if there will be no level restriction on this amazing loot. Said Kaplan, "They're deliberately created as twink items ... so you can be deliberately overpowered for a low level character to help level up or whatever." Make sure to check out the interview for more on the company's design intentions, hints at a "Kick off to Northrend" world event, and more reassurances that the Death Knight won't break the game.
15 Minutes of Fame: Inside PvP twinking
15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – both the renowned and the relatively anonymous. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about at 15minutesoffame (at) wowinsider (dot) com.Despite grumbles from some players, PvP twinking – playing at max level of a particular PvP battlegrounds bracket, with the best available gear and enchants for that level – has been legitimized by Blizzard as a valid meta-game within WoW. While most players I've spoken with don't seem to have strong feelings about twinking one way or the other, neither do they seem to understand why someone would be interested in getting into it. What's the attraction?We at 15 Minutes of Fame have an undeniable curiosity when it comes to meta-gamers and players who've carved out their own niches in the immense world that is World of Warcraft. That's how we came across Angrenous of Shadow Council, a PvP-aholic who runs warriors in almost every PvP bracket. Here's a player with his eyes wide open to all the various restrictions and limitations of WoW's PvP experience – and having a blast careening around in it.
The Art of War(craft): Twinkage part II
Last week, we discussed the matter of twinks and PvP. In many occasions, twinks exist purely to PvP, dominating lower-bracket Battlegrounds with their über-gear. In fact, there is no shortage of twink complaint threads on the World of Warcraft forums. Whatever one might feel about twinks, it's an ongoing phenomenon that shows no signs of letting up. I'm not a big fan of twinkage myself, but it's such a distinct subset of the PvP crowd that I feel compelled to write about it. Twice. Oh, and for the record, I am quite aware that 'twink' is a homosexual slang term. I prefer to think of the Hostess snack, though.So here we go, the second part of our look at twink PvP. Last week we discussed an overview of the potential items that twinks can obtain... I didn't make a comprehensive list since that's a considerable task. I did, however, give some pointers in the right direction. Considering that Resilience does not exist in lower level PvP, the key stat is Stamina, so get gear with loads of it. There are also ways to improve on gear, particularly using permanent item enchants. The most notorious of these is probably the Nethercleft Leg Armor, which requires Level 60 to apply, but has no item restriction. It might cost a bit of gold because it requires Primal Nether to craft, but the +40 Stamina is well worth it for twinks. Patch 2.4 also promises removing binding on nethers, which may or may not lower prices. For casters, the tailoring equivalents of Golden and Runic Spellthreads are also good investments, despite the 20 stamina hit.
