News about the glyphs is really welcome.


Edit: With the way some of the glyphs work, I could see some people that only play a class with one real spec deciding to set up their glyphs one way for one glyph spec, another way for the second spec, while maintaining the same actual talent point mix in both.

For example, for Prot Pallies, having the Glyph of Avenger's Shield in one Prot spec for max damage and threat, while not putting that in a different glyph spec so that he can provide better AoE threat...all while maintaining pretty much the same spec...perhaps a minor shift, but mostly the same.

Discourages new/levelling players from playing BGs until they hit max level. If you play WAR, it's lots of fun to PvE for a bit, then jump into a PvP match, then finish a quest or two, then go back to PvP. There's a real sense of freedom there.

Are you going to argue that twinks hurt WoW? There's no signal from Blizzard that they disapprove of twinking, despite the hate posts on official forums. Epic L70 LWing and tailoring threads can be placed on twink armor (my twink 39 lock wears the epic spelldamage thread).

More than likely, Blizzard will add back in the quests they took out (vanilla WoW), where you could turn in 3 of any BG token and you would get rep, exp and money. They were repeatable as often as you would like (NOT the daily quest that we have today). My first toon, a paladin, leveled half the way to 60 using those quests.


WAR also temporarily boosts low-level players to x8 level.

And lvl 10-11 (or the other caps) players are the equivalent of twinks vs bolstered players.

The "twink game," when it becomes completely prevalent, does more or less destroy PvP pre-cap for anyone who isn't a twink. There's not much point trying to kill level 19 rogues with fiery enchants and several hundred extra hit points as a lowly green-clad level 17 - you just lose, repeatedly.

Blizzard may well regard the twink game as a worthy aspect of gameplay and feel it deserves preservation, but twinks do absolutely hurt another aspect of the game (casual BG PvP sub-level cap).

The only people who play low level BGs are not just twinks. The people who, like, would want to not have to wait to hit level cap before they do some PvP are hurting. Just because you and the people you've been playing the game with for the last 3 years aren't hurting that doesn't mean nobody is.

I think that's mainly for two reasons. One, normal players leveling up toons don't want to go into a BG just to get steamrolled by twinks. And more importantly, there is no real reward other than marks. If some type of decent exp reward is added, and twinks were done away with, it would be a lot different.

Experience rewards for battlegrounds would arguably serve to change that, even if the experience rewards turn out to give considerably lower exp per hour than really playing.

It's an interesting change in Blizzards stance though, as far as I remember there's some part of the game guide section that encourages twinking as an activity for high level players, there are multiple enchants - as someone mentioned - that appear to be essentially twink-centric. But if they just implement the experience gains, they will essentially have to do something about twinking because the 19 and 29 brackets are just plain shit for anyone else. If people are expected to be able to level in battlegrounds, then "stay out of those brackets then" becomes a very weak argument.

In light of the statement about wanting to introduce battleground ratings, I wonder if that won't be their solution. If twinks remain at their target twink brackets but build rating, and rating then separates the queuing, the problem will essentially solve itself. Twinks can be twinks, and the normal levelers can level inside battlegrounds without getting stomped on. Everyone is happy.

First of all, I level alts. So I'd be "hurting" too if there were hurting to be done.

Second of all, I don't believe people leveling up participate in battlegrounds in any meaningful way at all. It's a waste of time. Not because there are twinks, but because it's a waste of time.

Now a post above posits that if there was an XP reward on the way up it wouldn't be a waste of time. OK, we can agree on that. In that case, it'll suck that some people choose to go back into BGs while leveling -- currently useless, suddenly made somewhat useful -- and get facerolled by twinks. Except, really, this is hardly different than what happens to newly minted 70s today. So I'm not persuaded it's a real problem. In fact, I'm persuaded it's a fake problem.

In the case of the level 37, they're getting mashed by a lvl 39 regardless of gear. Two levels is gigantic. In the case of a lvl 39, they are level 39 for such a short while, as horrible as the experience might be, it's over fairly quickly. You can never fix battlegrounds and their horrible imbalances on the way up. People shouldn't be overly encouraged to join them on the way, but rewarding them better should they choose to participate is certainly something no reasonable person is going to argue with.

Taking twinking out of the game after 3 years -- which tens of thousands or more people do enjoy immensely -- by contrast seems somewhat insane at this point. And, again, I don't do it and it doesn't interest me.

As someone who got multiple levels on an alt in the 30s, solely from playing AB games and turning in the tokens back when you could... it's really great to hear that they're looking to do that again. Long before WAR came along and made the idea popular, it's always been an interesting notion to give people the option of leveling up via controlled PVP.

The thing is, if they somehow could manage to get enough people interested in playing battlegrounds while leveling up, the issue of "twinks vs non-twinks" in battlegrounds could easily be solved. If there are enough people queuing up in a bracket, multiple matches can be spawned at any time; that way the twinks all go fight each other, and the non-twinks can beat up each other in their green gear. That's been done in higher level brackets, and it's works decently enough. But it can't currently be used in lower brackets, because there simply aren't enough players queuing up at any given time to make it feasible.

Somehow I can foresee this going to cause a lot of trickery with talented (long duration) buffs. For buffing swap for a second to your alternative spec which has most of the talents related to your classes buffs, then swap back to your main spec.

It's possible that talented buffs will simply drop off when you switch to the other spec if Blizzard thinks there'll be a problem. Most of the long buff talents are easy to reach and are sort of no-brainers, but DS might be an issue (like it always has been).

Paladin blessings already drop when untalented or when the target or casting paladin leaves the party, don't they?

They currently only do so if the Paladin actually leaves the raid, respeccing already doesn't do so. I frequently still have Improved Wisdom running on the casters when respeccing for Felmyst, and become incapable of overwriting my own Blessing of Wisdom when doing so.

I also can't say it's an issue. There's a number of different specs for classes with long duration buffs out there who can't typically afford to pick up their improved buffs, so being able to swap to a different spec for buffing at least means you can always count on having the improved version of the buffs, even if the person of whatever class is providing the buff you have present would not be able to fit in that buff in their normal spec and role.

Of course at that point you could start wondering "Why do talents that improve buffs still exist if everyone has a secondary spec with their improved buffs?" which is actually an interesting question. Would it really hurt the game if no one had to "waste" talent points on improving their buffs?

This might be a Paladin exclusive line of thought though, due to the nature of Blessings compared to other long duration buffs. For the other long duration buffs, you are typically going to take a single talent and it'll improve your buff for everyone in the raid (Divine Spirit being an obvious exception due to being just deep enough to exclude you from taking another tree's 51-point talent). As a Paladin you need to improve each blessing through talents individually, and they (typically) don't apply to your entire raid, and no specs want to pick up all the various improved blessing talents at the same time.

That's a good question and I honestly doubt raids consider Imp Fort or BoK optional these days. Tanks have had some of their passive and mandatory-feeling talents reworked since the devs want their talents to feel more like interesting options. I don't know if they achieved that goal as I haven't looked too hard at those tank talent trees, but I don't see what downside would exist for taking that idea and extending it to buff talents.

Well, other than having to spend significant design time on talents to replace said buff-related talents, of course.

To me the buffing system itself feels like a relic from past MMO games that Blizzard just refused to drop. It doesn't really add any gameplay value or interaction other than further feeding the broken monstrosity that the dispel system has become. If you expect a class buff to be present on all raid members then it might as well be an aura, those extra button presses to put it up don't add anything to the game.

Right, so that level 10, with his first talent point and impressive white items, going up vs a full-leveled, thrice-his-health, 19 geared in his best quest greens and possibly even a Dead Mines / Wailing Caverns drop will really have a chance. Sure, makes sense.

And no, even temporarily leveling those to 17 (like WAR does) for the purpose of that BG still will not do much. A rogue with a 2-4 damage white weapon vs one with a [Militant Shortsword] is still going to get his ass kicked seven ways to Tuesday.

But wait ! Why stop there ? Why not simply put everyone in twink gear and level 19, with their talents perfectly spent ?

I don't give a toss about the 19 bracket, exactly because it is stupendous in its current form. 9 Levels will do more for you than twinking ever will.

The 10-19 bracket is an extreme example though, low level players can contribute meaningfully today in any bracket by just focusing on support rather than trying to kill anyone. The problem is a level 10 player has so few abilities they might not even have their support skills yet.

Well, battlegrounds are supposed to be fun, and many new players do try their hand at BGs on the way to the cap. Do we really want them to be actively discouraged by the retards who couldn't handle pvp at the cap and so spend their time in the 29 bracket?

But more practically, battlegrounds offer excellent item rewards. Now, if you're twinking this point is moot. If not however BGs before the cap serve the same purpose as BGs at the cap, you can get very good quality gear very easily. Spending a couple hours in WSG to get a ridiculously well designed sword to make the next ten levels trivial as hell is a wise time investment. The honor price of these items is so low as to be meaningless, it's just a matter of getting the tokens.

I still often do this on my alts, ironically because twinkers drive up the prices on low level gear. I just make a comparison in my head if it will take more time doing dailies on my main or WSG matches on my rogue twink to get whatever item and go with that.

Don't even need to do that. They've said they're looking at granting XP via battlegrounds. So all you have to do is split the queues into (Battleground X with XP gain) and (Battleground X with no XP gain). Every single twink will have to join the latter queue, while no sane non-twink would take anything except the first option.

Right, it's a waste of time, much like how every thing we ever do in this game is a waste of time unless we're having fun doing it.

And a few levels is not a "gigantic" difference. I've obliterated lvl 60/70 people at lvls 51 and 61, as well as lower brackets, in BGs with my various untwinked alts. I'm not saying it's a balanced, highly compeditive setting where victories grant you massive epeen like such things obviously do at lvl cap, but it suree breaks the monotony of leveling.

I'm sure more than "tens of thousands" of people would enjoy being able to do to occational low level BGs without twinks, while gaining experience and good low level items for it.

This is what I see as being the most likely implementation, or something similar. I think twinks are too deep ingrained to simply say too bad, time to level. But they can add all the optional xp they want, but if I still get 1 shot by the twink rogues running around and watching an impossible to kill twink pally stand there with the flag, I still wont touch the lower level battlegrounds.

I could see xp for battlegrounds end up being added the same time they figure out how to fairly rate battlegrounds in order to split twinks and non twinks. They've worked hard to try to make arena teams face off against people with similar gear, and pug battleground groups don't fight premade after premade. They wont ignore twinks vs. non-twinks.

The classic chicken before the egg. Players have spent the last 3 years learning that low level battlegrounds are not a very fun place to be unless your a twink. Saying only twinks want to play them just because only twinks play them is a fallacy. As for people playing the normal way by leveling by questing I went through all the lowbie areas making sure I had 100% quest completion over the last few weeks and their are still significant numbers of players leveling by the same old methods even on day 1 servers,

OK, fair points all. But twinking exists and you can do all of this. I mean do I want them actively discouraged from the 29s bracket? Yeah, to some extent. No, if they are willing to get rolled. Are people really advocating an end to twinking? Or are they advocating that people who choose -- like in this example -- to seek the rewards available be allowed to get them. If the latter, of course they can get those rewards.

Now, I should also be clear, it seems incredibly purposeless to pair un-geared "standard" lvl 15-19 players against fully twinked 19s. I'm not clear why a twinked 19 finds that matchup fun to be honest. But as ridiculous as it is, there are people -- and I picked tens of thousands out of thin air, who knows what the number is -- for whom twinked BGs are WoW. There simply is no realistic argument for eliminating that part of the game. Compartmentalizing it? That sounds like a workable plan.

A point I wanted to make: I have read the comments carefully, and Blizzard seems to have made sure to never refer to the Dual-spec system as being "free." I believe those expecting it to not cost 50g to swap between the two specs are being overly optimistic. The system has been pitched mainly from the point of convenience: switching action bars automatically, not having to remember where the points go, etc. They have never stated they were removing respec monetary costs, and I think that's an intentional omission.