Twinking

A twink is somebody who, within the confines and restrictions that a game provides, attempts to maximize the effectiveness of his character in one or more categories. The process is called twinking and a character made in this fashion is considered "twinked" or "twinked out".

CRPGs and MMORPGs

In computer role-playing games and MMORPGs, twinking refers to outfitting a new character or player with items or other resources that are not normally available to new or low-level characters. A twink in this usage is a type of powergamer and munchkin. The term can also refer to the twinked character itself (e.g., "My twink has all the best gear.") In its most basic definition, a twink is a character with better gear than they could have easily gotten on their own.

One example of twinking is when a player equips themselves with higher-end gear in order to avoid the "newbie" hump. Another example of twinking is when a player equips themselves with all the best possible gear for his level range and fills them up with end-game enchantments in order to easily kill newer players.

Many new players dislike twinking, since it gives a major advantage to established players who want to start a new character. Many games have item restrictions that prevent new characters from using high-level items and upsetting game balance; for instance, "Diablo II" implements ability score and level requirements. Usually what happens is that players who have been playing for a long time accumulate items that are useless to a high-level character but very helpful to low level characters that just barely meet the requirements. It's also common for twinking items to be traded at good values due to persistent demand. Sometimes, this will go so far as to inflate twink equipment prices, as high level players are willing to pay more than a newbie would be able to. Some new players do not like to be twinked, as it can ruin their first run through of the game - they prefer to earn the equipment for themselves.

Another game in which twinking is common is Anarchy Online. The trader class has a skill-enhancing "nanoprogram", the equivalent of spells in fantasy MMORPGs, called the Wrangle which will boost all of a character's general combat skills and skills for casting nanoprograms by a certain number of points. This, combined with other attribute-enhancing nanoprograms, makes twinking easy for players who have been playing for a long time and have made friends who play the Trader class. Also as large part of items in game don't have level limitations and due the large variety of items, low-level charters are often able to equip equipments meant for much higher level charters.

The practice of character twinking can also be found in World of Warcraft, where players are divided into level-brackets in Battlegrounds. By using above-average equipment otherwise difficult or impossible to obtain by other players in the same bracket as well as using end-game enchantments, twinked characters have a significant advantage over non-twinked opponents in terms of survivability and lethality often having triple the health of a non-twinked character. Twinking in Battlegrounds is more common in low level-brackets, due to the relatively lower costs to supply twink equipment and higher potency of end-game enchantments. According to World of Warcraft designers, the ability for players to twink was a design flaw.

Twinking can happen whenever players can interact and trade with each other, regardless of how present other players can be in the game itself; the console roleplaying game Pokémon, as an example, allows players to trade their Pokémon with each other; the game features a badge system to prevent a player just starting the game from effectively using a high-level Pokémon without progressing to a certain point in the game itself.

Twinking was once very common in the CRPG Guild Wars, when players would have their low level characters taken by high level characters to end-game areas to obtain the best armor, weapons, and skills available, as Guild Wars does not have a level limit on such things. These twinked characters would then return to low level PvP areas to fight significantly disadvantaged opponents. This practice became so proliferate that the Guild Wars development team introduced a patch prohibiting characters with high level armor entering beginner arenas.

Etymology

There are several possible etymologies for the word, and it may not have been derived from a single source, instead evolving from several. Although it is unlikely the word was spontaneously created, no one is completely sure where the term came from.

A term used early in online gaming within MUDs was "tweaking". Definitionally, tweaking was nearly synonymous with twinking, except that it wasn't specifically referring to lower level characters, instead it related to any character that pushed the rules of the game to the absolute extreme to arrive at the most powerful avatar possible. The closeness in pronunciation and meaning suggests a high likelihood that twinking evolved from this usage, perhaps even purposely misspelled as is often the case in MMORPGs, such as "Pwnd" (owned) and "Leet" (elite).

The term "Twinkie" was used in Everquest in 1999, where players could acquire a bronze plate armor that could be equipped by lower level characters. The low level characters were completely clad in golden bronze armor with a high armor value but still only had a handful of hitpoints, hence the referral to a "Hostess Twinkie" - bright golden outside, soft and squishy inside.

The word "Twink," with a meaning similar to its current one (This definition also included an experienced player following a newer one around and healing/buffing them in combat), appeared in the Ultima Online: Renaissance playguide in the glossary of terms, as well.

Online text-based role-playing games

In online text-based role-playing games such as MUDs and MU*s, twinking may include, but is not limited to:
* Denial-of-service or "DoS" attacks;
* Hacking the server;
* Creating an invincible or extremely powerful character with which the twink will seek to dominate in role-play;
* Aggravating and attacking the game administration and/or game community;
* God-moding;
* Cheating;
* Powergaming;
* Metagaming - for example, creating a character which will guess plot-points that they would not otherwise know had the player themselves not known it.

References