Reading through this thread, I think one problem is that the term "twink" can mean different things to different people. For me, there are three different types of twink.
The first type are the twelve-year-old kiddies (or, in the case of some people that I know in real life, adults with all the maturity of twelve year olds) who spend all the gold they bought from the chinese farmers on the very best items so that they can prove their leetness by one-shotting newbies in BG and world PVP. They're the type of terminally bored and talentless idiots who enjoy corpse-camping players forty levels lower than them or killing quest-givers in lowbie Horde or Alliance areas. Such guys are looking to play WoW in God mode and hate any sort of challenge. Usually, such guys are actually a liability in BG as all they want to do is farm easy HK's and brag about their place in the damage meters. Forget about getting such guys to actually work with the rest of their team. I've won several WSG matches simply because half the Horde side weren't interested in doing anything more than scoring easy kills by camping the Alliance graveyard while the Alliance players that weren't being camped had little trouble capturing the Horde flag and defending their flag against the very few Horde that were actually trying to play.
The second kind of twink are the kind of players who think they need the very best weapons and enchants in order to level up, rather than simply finding out how to play their class and doing their homework on the most efficient quest circuits. They're usually easy to recognise by the fact that they constantly spam the guild chat or trade channel for boosts so that they can farm the blue/purple item with the 0.00001% drop rate that they think they need in order to level with. They will also think nothing of spending 50G enchanting a BOE blue that will be vendor trash in a ten levels or so - less if they would simply learn how to play in a group and do a few instance runs. For the record, other than food and potions, I've spent a grand total of seven gold since my mid-twenties levelling a night elf rogue (currently level 57) and even that was a mistake since it was on one sword that I hardly ever used since I later discovered that a quest reward sword that I already had was better.
Then there's those twinks, a small minority in all probability, who actually see twinking as a challenge. They will usually be quite skilled, will have done their homework on how to beat each of the individual classes with their chosen class, will have researched the best weapons, gear and enchants for their level and will actually enjoy a good fight where their opponent doesn't die in the first three seconds. Frankly, anyone with that mentality is more likely to simply get their characters up to 70 and fight in Arena -the HK farmers worst nightmare - rather than bother with the lower-level BG's where the rewards just aren't worth the effort and expense.
When people complain about twinks, they usually mean the first kind as these are the ones who are ruining BG's, especially at the lower levels which are more gear than skill dependent. However there are a few of the third kind in this thread who are confusing the issue.
The first type are the twelve-year-old kiddies (or, in the case of some people that I know in real life, adults with all the maturity of twelve year olds) who spend all the gold they bought from the chinese farmers on the very best items so that they can prove their leetness by one-shotting newbies in BG and world PVP. They're the type of terminally bored and talentless idiots who enjoy corpse-camping players forty levels lower than them or killing quest-givers in lowbie Horde or Alliance areas. Such guys are looking to play WoW in God mode and hate any sort of challenge. Usually, such guys are actually a liability in BG as all they want to do is farm easy HK's and brag about their place in the damage meters. Forget about getting such guys to actually work with the rest of their team. I've won several WSG matches simply because half the Horde side weren't interested in doing anything more than scoring easy kills by camping the Alliance graveyard while the Alliance players that weren't being camped had little trouble capturing the Horde flag and defending their flag against the very few Horde that were actually trying to play.
The second kind of twink are the kind of players who think they need the very best weapons and enchants in order to level up, rather than simply finding out how to play their class and doing their homework on the most efficient quest circuits. They're usually easy to recognise by the fact that they constantly spam the guild chat or trade channel for boosts so that they can farm the blue/purple item with the 0.00001% drop rate that they think they need in order to level with. They will also think nothing of spending 50G enchanting a BOE blue that will be vendor trash in a ten levels or so - less if they would simply learn how to play in a group and do a few instance runs. For the record, other than food and potions, I've spent a grand total of seven gold since my mid-twenties levelling a night elf rogue (currently level 57) and even that was a mistake since it was on one sword that I hardly ever used since I later discovered that a quest reward sword that I already had was better.
Then there's those twinks, a small minority in all probability, who actually see twinking as a challenge. They will usually be quite skilled, will have done their homework on how to beat each of the individual classes with their chosen class, will have researched the best weapons, gear and enchants for their level and will actually enjoy a good fight where their opponent doesn't die in the first three seconds. Frankly, anyone with that mentality is more likely to simply get their characters up to 70 and fight in Arena -the HK farmers worst nightmare - rather than bother with the lower-level BG's where the rewards just aren't worth the effort and expense.
When people complain about twinks, they usually mean the first kind as these are the ones who are ruining BG's, especially at the lower levels which are more gear than skill dependent. However there are a few of the third kind in this thread who are confusing the issue.