One must bury the dead and heal the sick, not the other way around. For the past year I’ve been playing in the 39 bracket at Cyclone EU, and today I’m pulling the plug. It was a bumpy ride, but it was the best MMO experience I’ve had so far. My thanks go out to everyone who played in our community, friends and enemies alike. I’m leaving the bracket because I want to put my money where my mouth is at. In my previous blog I tried to inspire twinks to look beyond their dead bracket or battlegroup, but I realized I wasn’t living up to it myself. Post 3.2 we had a few WSG pops every sunday, but that was it. It felt like owning a Scarlett Johansson Porsche I was only allowed to ride once a week. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not enough.
I tried to think of ways to attract more twinks, but I realized the best I could give was an empty promise. Europe just doesn’t have the quantity for an active 39 bracket yet. I had to look beyond 39, beyond Cyclone. I looked for a thriving 49 or 59 battlegroup, but sadly those didn’t survive 3.2 either. This might seem odd to American twinks, but it really isn’t. In terms of quantity I believe American and European twinks are on par, but European twinks are divided by the linguistic zones set by Blizzard: English, Spanish, French, German and Russian. American twinks only have to deal with G’day. This language barrier is hard to overcome, because most Europeans only speak their native language.
I did find a glimmer of hope in a different battlegroup and bracket: Cruelty 29. They’re getting WSG pops every day, starting at 10 PM. It’s not ideal, because 10 PM is pretty late for most players, but it’s a start. I will convince friend and foe to join this community, with the following long-term goals in mind:
- WSG pops starting at 5 PM until midnight;
- Small casual and hardcore guilds scattered across different realms;
- An active 2v2/3v3 arena scene;
- No premades until the above goals are achieved.
The first goal – frequent and early WSG pops – should be the first goal of every twink bracket that wants to be successful. In the US, 39 Cyclone had a stellar arena community, but arena alone can’t keep a bracket alive. Even if arena is your main focus, you need something to do until your arena partners or opponents log on. Prior to 3.2 you could melt faces in WSG until they did. After 3.2 people would log on, notice that their arena partners or opponents weren’t online and log out. Without WSG, there’s no arena.
You need both casual and hardcore guilds. Whether you’re Joe the keyboardturner or Brumble the macro-maniac, you should have a guild you feel comfortable playing in. Without casual guilds the WSG queue’s will be long, and without hardcore guilds brackets lose their competitive edge. I do believe these guilds have to be scattered across different realms within the battlegroup. Too often twink “super realms” start to emerge, everyone transfers or rolls on the same realm. This might work for awhile, but it’ll hinder the bracket’s long-term progression. With too many twinks on one realm, obtaining BoE gear from the AH can become quite a pain, not to mention the increased competition on AGM.
Premades aren’t a good idea when the bracket’s still under construction. If you steamroll a PuG once or twice, they’ll simply stop queue’ing – You might as well shoot yourself in the foot. Too much too early is never good.
So to all homeless European twinks out there, try Cruelty 29. As of now I have left 39 Cyclone, and tomorrow I’ll pick a suitable realm in the Cruelty BG for our new 29 guild. We won’t transfer our mains for BoA’s. A level 58 Death Knight is all you need to get started. Saying goodbye to your bracket isn’t easy, but right now nearly every bracket in Europe has a glass that’s half empty. But all those glasses combined will fill up one glass entirely. Once we’ve achieved a solid foundation, we can think about expanding into other brackets again.
That’ll have to do for now! In my next blog I’ll talk about our progress and the problems we have to deal with as a guild and as a bracket in a post 3.2 era.
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11 Comments until now
hey we had the latin servers in US vindication (all spanish speakers….made BG coordination hell) and very late at night aussies start to get on – like u mentioned. i never realized EU servers were broken into language…that would definitely make getting twinks together hard. gl tho!
@falkor that’s why I, as an spanish member of the cruelty battlegroup, had to transfer to an english server of the battlegroup in order to have games. If there is not enough people on the servers of your same language, BGs will not pop.
Anyway, welcome Ishh to our little playground. Let’s see if we can get enough people and reach these objectives.
It might be useful to say that there is an IRC channel especially for our little battlegroup:
EU-Nightfall on quakenet.
It’s named after our old battlegroup name, and has existed for ages. Might want to hop on there and talk for a bit: http://webchat.quakenet.org/ works great.
[...]tomorrow I’ll pick a suitable realm in the Cruelty BG for our new 29 guild.
Sounds nice, say where and when and I will join you if my time allows it.
I was leader of the biggest 39 and 60 guild on Frenzy and today I will disband the guild. We tried many thinks, opened several bgs, but as you said, riding Scar… a nice car only once a week sucks.
Hey, we survived till november, thats quite more than I aspected
Back to the point: Say when and where and I will be there. Have still some nice 29ers to transfer if you start as alliance guild.
It 1:30PM server time and on silvermoon we have six twinks on, this bracket isn’t dead yet. Oh yeah and 29 sucks balls.
Bench, don’t be hatin’ bro..
Have fun in your WSG queues!
p.s 29 Rocks!
personally i like 39 and 49 better, but as of now 29 is the only choice for getting regular games, so.. im here..
Hey Ishh, I made the conscious decision 2 weeks ago to move to Cruelty 29. I also wanted to find an active 49+ BG but sadly they are all dead. It just seems to be the case that the quantity of twinks is proportional to the level.
19 I wasn’t interested in, and I personally feel it is an over-subscribed market. As a rogue, I need Vanish, without it I feel a lot less dynamic.
I’m pretty much geared and funded. I sat down for 12 hours and grinded to 300 mining, a day later I had nearly 2k gold. Levelling to 58 took 2 hours, there really is no excuse. I can’t talk about other classes, but BOA’s are really not needed with rogue in this bracket – slap on 15hit to gloves and you’re nearly hit capped. A bit of gear optimization and you are geared with a good chunk of stamina.
The general concensus is that it’s a bit one sided – that side being the horde side. I’ve rolled alliance over at Bronze Dragonflight, there’s around 7-8 of us already done, and about 3-4 more who are toying with the bait.
A few caveats though – the core population are not too welcoming of premades, and there seems to be restrictions of hunters in battlegrounds.
Speak to Dawson, if you have not already.
Oh, I’m also presuming that the glass is logarithmic, otherwise, I’m confused how you can fit so many half glasses into one glass?
mho, the future of twinks are the so called single-use/throw away / boa-twinks. Start new char – gear ut with boas – play xp-bgs til 40, delete – rince n repeat. … sad but true.
* unless blizz manages to unite each of the lower level brackets across the realms into virtual BGs for each bracket.
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