Blizzard Beefs up World of Warcraft's Recruit-a-Friend

It appears that Blizzard has beefed up their World of Warcraft recruit-a-friend program rather substantially. There have been rumors that this was coming for a while now, but the details are still a little surprising. Benefits include triple experience, being able to summon your friend from anywhere in the world, free levels, free gametime, and even a free mount if your friend signs up for a two-month subscription. All of these are subject to several quid pro quos, but it looks like Blizzard is really trying to ramp up their player base for the expansion.

Comments

Multi-boxing

[CogDissident]

You know, honestly, I wanted to multi-box WoW (ie: play as two or more characters at once). And this is just the thing I needed to actually have an incentive to start doing so.

Re:Multi-boxing

[aikouka]

I enjoy playing more than one character at a time in WoW. I don't do same class setups and I control everything manually, so it's a bit different than you've seen in those quad-boxing elemental shaman videos. It's also all done on the same PC with dual monitors. I have three high-level pairs right now... enhancement shaman + fire mage, protection paladin + affliction warlock and arms warrior + holy priest.

The idea of the shaman+mage combo is that they're two DPS trying to kill the mob as fast as possible, but what makes it nice is that enhancement shamans tend to have lulls in their DPS as they're very bursty with Windfury and crits. The mage helps make up for these bursts by simply throwing a couple spells into the mix. It's rarely anything more than maybe a scorch or two and if necessary, fire blast. Usually the shaman is good enough to get the mob down very far in the first few seconds.

The priest+warrior was started because of how much I disliked leveling my warrior to 60 in the early days of WoW. It's honestly not very fast unless I fight more than one thing at a time (go go sweeping strikes!) in which this combo simply can last quite a long time. So essentially, if I want to maximize time on this combo, I need to literally be fighting 4+ mobs at a time. Also, a priest helps negate one factor that hurts a warrior... the time between fights (which affects your left over rage).

The paladin+warlock was more or less setup to assist both characters. One could easily use a Voidwalker as a warlock or simply chain-fear a mob until it dies, but at times, this can be more mana intensive and the voidwalker isn't necessarily the best at holding aggro and is limited against multiple mobs. The Paladin is more like a second pet for my Warlock... an enhanced Void Walker in a sense. The real benefit is for my Paladin as the warlock definitely provides DPS which is what the protadin lacks.

Only negative aspect I can say about this is sometimes you simply don't learn everything about your class. Sometimes it's figuring out how to beat a difficult situation that shows the possible amazing abilities that your class has that may not be exactly obvious.

Re:Multi-boxing

[Anonymous Coward]

And at the end of the day it requires atleast a decent amount of knowledge and experience to pull off this build.
I mean it's like having a group of all mages or clerics in Final Fantasy I, you vary your tactics if you want to survive.
Personally I think WoW is like most modern games in that you create your own experience. Multi-boxing takes a solo experience (while grouping creates a grouped mentality, you are still primarily concerned with only one character) and turns it into squad based experience. While multi-boxing you are completely concerned with every character, as if anyone dies then you have failed to some extent.
I will agree that some things become alot easier with this method, but then collection quests take forever.

On a side not to shoot myself in the foot, I played with a trial account with the refer bonus and managed to hit level 9 before I reached the second major quest hub in Durotar without having done any collect x parts quests.
That said, I know the quests and most classes very well as I've been playing for a number of years now. (first char was a Huntard who knew how to control aggro and what strafing was)

Re:Multi-boxing

[Danny Rathjens]

I played WoW for a few months in 2005 on the Magtheridon PvP server. A guy on the horde side there had 5 accounts and , just as you suggest, all mages and a priest. The interesting thing was that he used a single keyboard and had all 5 computers with a wireless keyboard receiver so that when he typed a key to move or cast a spell they all did it. There was a lot of uproar about it at the time that he was exploiting or cheating, but he made an easy target if you manage to get his characters unsynched from each other enough then it was 5 easy pvp kills for my rogue. :D

Re:Multi-boxing

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

These teams are NOT hard to beat. We beat one on my under-geared, 1400 rated screw-around 5v5 team.

Line of sight is absolutely essential in arenas. Anyone who is decent understands how exploit it, and it's extremely easy to do with macroed teams.

All it takes is a well-timed psychic scream and all of the macros go out the window. Macros stop working when you get out of follow range.

Active Accounts

[dintech]

it looks like Blizzard is really trying to ramp up their player base for the expansion.

I would love to see what the active number of players looks like these days. I stopped playing just after the first expansion. Partly because it didn't add enough for me. I won't be buying the new expansion and reactivating my account and I think there are probably a few people in my situation.

The programme sounds exciting but it seems to be just a bit to little too late.

Re:Huh?

[halivar]

WoW has completely broken down the barriers of stereotyping and social class systems. Nerd play it. Preppies play it. Girls play it. Grown-up professionals play it. High-school football players play it. Military service members play it.

I have a number of friends who, though addicted to WoW, somehow manage to keep up with otherwise completely no-stereotypical lives.

The stigma video games as a "nerd" activity is all but dead to my generation.

Re:First hit is free...

[Cornflake917]

Tried EvE. It just got old after awhile because I had to use it more and more just to get high. Also, since their product was more complicated to use, EvE-fiends were pretty elitist and thought they were special and more intelligent than WoW-whores. I just had to quit.

So yeah, maybe it's good to hook a friend up with EvE. They are more likely to get out of the MMO scene before their addiction destroys their lives.

Re:Shameless

[Billly Gates]

I heard someone in the trade channels in Shattrah jokingly said Blizzard should buy these gold farming companies. They could make a lot of money. ... I thought for a second that I would not put that under them since the merge with activision.

I bet you will be able to pay $$ for extra gold next. If that happens and the local economy inflates I may just switch to LOTR online or stop playing all together.

I do agree its a tempting slippery slope for a for-profit-shareholder owned company.

I am already mad that they made the horde and especially the turrens more powerful with the latest patch. PVP is 8-1 in favor of horde.

Re:I still don't get it

[Phrogman]

Thats the norm for all MMOs it seems. View the actual game content that you are *supposed to be enjoying* as "grind", then get to the "end game" and whine there is nothing to do. I have seen this in many people in pretty much every MMO.

Its a power thing for people I think. They don't want to compete at anything less than a level field (or preferably one that favours them) and they don't want a challenge. Its perhaps a reflection of the instant-gratification nature of our society on one hand, and the competitive nature of our society on the other. I read an article recently that was saying that pretty much every aspect of North American society is viewed as a competition these days. We have somehow concluded that we are losers if we don't compete at everything and don't win at it as well.

At the same time few players are willing to admit they have anything to learn when it comes to playing MMOs as well - so they fail to learn from their experiences and fail to learn from others. As a result the often suck very badly when playing in groups. I am sure it seems even more apparent in WOW given the number of players present.

I enjoy playing the game to play the game - leveling up a character to max means simply that I am likely to stop playing that character. The "End game" content of most games seems to be grinding to engage in PvP - and quite frankly I have no desire to associate with the typical PvP oriented player. The vast majority are complete fuckwit assholes, and they occlude the decent and competitive PvPers I wouldn't mind playing with. People also take PvP competition far far too seriously I think. PvP was fun in its earliest incarnation in DAOC for instance, until they introduced Realm Points and Realm Point Skills and suddenly we weren't fighting the enemy because they were the enemy, we were fighting them so we could personally gain more power and abilities. That ruined RvR in DAOC in the long run.

Redundant Array of Shaman

[_Sprocket_]

I play in the Shadowburn battle group. Occasionally there's this redundant array of shaman that show up in the AV games (from a different server - I forget which). They always appear in the same 5-man group and have the same initial letters in their names. I've seen them wreck havok. Immediate heals on each other, concentrated firepower, occasional res on a fallen component. Totems times five adds to the effect. All component shaman are decked out in near identical PvP gear.

I've been able to tell which component shaman has the player behind it by two ways. First, when addressed, the player will occasionally give simple responces in BG chat. Secondly, when moving, the player-controlled character will be out front followed by a group of 4 that move on top of each other.

I would imagine setting up a 5-box group like this would be kind of interesting from a technical angle. However, after watching this redundant array of shaman in action, I'm convinced the reward is being a considerable force on the battlefield.

Re:Redundant Array of Shaman

[Ogive17]

I remember seeing this guy.. wish I could remember his name. During the winter "super snow ball" season I hit his lead toon with a snowball off the AV bridge near the Alliance base... then laughed my ass off as the other 4 all walked off the bridge to their death. I didn't know what really happened until a guild mate explained it to me.

Re:Um...

[ukyoCE]

It's pretty big news depending on how you look at it. Some feel that this is Blizzard giving a big middle finger to their loyal players who have been recruiting friends for 4 years, by now giving only newbies a 3X leveling bonus.

Others have pointed out that the result of this is Blizzard making players PAY to level faster. For instance I've got friends who already play WOW, but we can't play together because they're on another server, and on the opposite faction (so can't server transfer).

If they want to reroll and play with me, Blizzard is now making them choose between:

A) Playing on the same account, with normal (slow) leveling speed.

B) Buy a second copy of the game for $30, plus another $15 a month, to be able to level 3 times as fast.

Considering the amount of time it takes to level, B is a really attractive offer, especially if you have a limited amount of time on your hands.

Re:I still don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

I find the end-game PvE content far more interesting than the levelling content, I've spent over 7 days game-time at 70 and will be spending many more, it's no longer a grind but actually fun.

Who needs free XP

[kcbanner]

Using Glider you can get a character to 70 in a couple weeks (if your a "casual" botter), less if your more experienced and have the scripts setup already, etc.

What ends up happening is you chain your accounts together through the refer a "friend" program, so when you pay up your bot accounts each one in turn gets free time.

I had stopped playing WoW for quite awhile...Glider actually made the game fun and got me started playing it again. I never got banned.

Looks like with this new system Blizzard is trying to reinforce their "real" player base.

I guess you don't get it

[snuf23]

You have it a little backwards. Good gear (epic loot) is a requirement to run the end game content. Getting the gear is a way to see the content. End game raids are another part of the road.
There is a gear progression required in order to be able to do the end game raids. I know some people like to wave their epeen about and look down on non-raiders but I believe those are in the minority. You may notice them because they are vocal.
I don't run end game raids for loot - if I get a nice item it's gear that will allow me to move to the later stage raids. I enjoy the end game raid battles because they are a lot of fun.
I enjoyed the leveling game as well and pvp for that matter. I have one level 70 and two level 62s. I can certainly understand why someone may want to rush to 70. The complete class talent builds and the gear that make them viable aren't available until you hit max level.
People enjoy different things about the game. Some prefer the questing and leveling game, some prefer pvp and some prefer instances and end game raiding.

Re:I guess you don't get it

[Moraelin]

The talent builds are certainly as viable at level 10 as they are at level 70, because the game is tuned at every step for how many talent points can you have. Plus, they were viable enough pre-BC. I don't think anyone who was grinding MC or AQ at level 60 before went, "man, this character is so non-viable without another 10 talents!"

Ditto for gear. Most of the game is doable even with whites and _greys_. Challenging, but viable nevertheless.

To quote from Cranius's Big Blue Dress:

Well just remember this: when next you look to kill
That a man who's truly skilled can look quite good in twill

The quote is from a guy who, as far as I understand, was kicking a reasonable amount of ass in PvP too. In _twill_.

So, sorry, I'll even accept other arguments. But, "The complete class talent builds and the gear that make them viable aren't available until you hit max level." (my emphasis) is just flat out not true. They're perfectly viable for the level they are.

Re:It still doesn't enlighten me much

[ZorbaTHut]

Your analogy is a bit flawed, but largely because you're not assigning the right set of costs.

The slow part is "learning World of Warcraft". Some people never do that. Some people do it relatively quickly. I got a good handle on the game itself on my second character (the first one was just after release, and a huge amount has changed since then.) I know how a Prot Warrior works very thoroughly - while I don't know what the abilities of (for example) a Rogue are, exactly, I know the basic mechanics involved - Rogues dual-wield so they need lots of extra +hit, agility and strength increase Rogue damage, Rogues use Energy instead of mana or rage.

I couldn't sit down at a level 70 rogue and be effective.

I could sit down at a level 1 rogue and, within about fifteen minutes, figure out how they work. If I had a magic button to raise me ten levels, I could probably reasonably thoroughly understand a level 10 rogue in about half an hour, and every extra ten levels might take me an hour at most.

Meanwhile, actually leveling to level 70 takes days of 24/7 playing. If I wanted to play a Rogue in end-game raiding - and I kind of do - I'm gonna be sitting at my computer grinding up to 70 over the period of weeks. All for that six or seven hours of training.

Some people need the training - especially if it's your first character. Others don't. Those of us that don't just want to get the leveling over with - we've seen the quests, we've seen the zones, we've seen the monsters, we just want XP fast.

(And some of us enjoy that end-game content. I play WoW for the challenge, and there's damn little challenge before you hit 70. The best memories I have of the game are times I managed to pull off an unexpected fantastic victory through sheer skill - you don't have that when you're expecting victory on every single fight, and the fights are largely meaningless anyway.)