Blizzard have launched a new drive for their rapidly ailing World Of Warcraft player base, in a last-ditch desperate attempt to drum up interest in the game, before it has to switch off its servers. Called Recruit A Friend, they’re hoping that by giving incentives to the smattering of players they currently have, they’ll be able to encourage new blood and rejuvenate the MMO.
Ha de ha. Honestly, there can’t be bank vaults big enough for storing all of Blizzards dosh, but they can’t stop. Recruit A Friend has players email their non-WoW-playing chums (is that possible?) to give them a trial activiation key. The motive? A zebra.
The website explains,
“For each person you refer who upgrades to a retail version of World of Warcraft and purchases two months of game time, you will be able to give a character on the account you sent the invitation from an exclusive in-game zhevra mount. This unique mount can be claimed through the website, is only available to Recruit-A-Friend participants, and can only be applied to a single character.”
If the recruited player only upgrades and pays for one month rather than two, the recruiter will gain 30 days of free play time, which is none too shabby. And if you can convince a bunch of people to sign on, those free months stack up.
There’s also to be some spooky linking between recruiters and their recruitee that lasts for 90 days. This will allow you to summon one another once an hour, and if playing together, gain triple experience. And a third, more confusing thing that I’ll not attempt to paraphrase: “For every two levels the new player earns, the new player can grant one free level-up to a lower-level character played by the veteran player.” Take away the number you first suggested – who is the tallest son?
There are, inevitably, 284 complications and sub-rules about this, all explained here
And hopefully Warcraft will be able to scrape through the 12 million player mark that all MMOs must fight to reach.
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This will be really great for multiboxing.
I got banned for botting, but not in a bad way.
I think wow’s death-throes will last so long that it will put HL1 CS to shame. I’m hoping that as WoW dies Blizz will gradually eliminate barriers to play in ever more desperate attempts to bring in new players (e.g. above, the quest XP buff & the pvp tourney – except these are just the start!) and hold on to old ones, and that the ‘opening-up’ of WoW will have some sort of effect on the development of new MMPORGS. Hopefully this effect will involve altering player expectations so that the next generation of MMPORG designers will be incentivised to make their games less like jobs and more like, uh, games.
EDIT: current ad banner is wowcursors.com.
Actually, most of my friends did play and have now quit, same as me. (Though my exit from the game is definitively permanent due to poor customer service that lost me my $80 collector’s edition account.) The frustrating thing about WoW is that there are so many servers and so little inter-server functionality. When I was playing, so were all my friends (pretty much), both online and offline. All of them were playing on other servers. None of them on the same server as any other, so there was no easy way to migrate where a big clump of friends were playing. I myself was reluctant to go to even one other friend, because I had the support of a good guild composed primarily of acquaintances from the MUD I’d been on for ~8 years at that point. The sole actual friend from that guild left to play on a different server.
Very few people were willing to continue to log on to the other internet realms or IM programs I contacted them on, so I lost quite a few friends to WoW even while I was playing the exact same game.
I’m a bit late, but here’s how good that program is. If you know the game, you can hit level 58 in less than 14 hours /played.
14. Hours.
Still too long for me!
“And hopefully Warcraft will be able to scrape through the 12 million player mark that all MMOs must fight to reach.”
Haha.
I’ve been playing for about a month and a half, and I’m very into it, but I can see why Blizzard needs to encourage new players, when people are leaving in droves for newer games.
It would help hugely if they actually listened to their players and improved the game. At the moment it’s full of gold sellers and gold farming bots, that are never removed, and things like the battlegrounds are screwed up because those who want to play it seriously have to put up with low level gank fodder being on the team, that’re only there to lose quick and farm honor for gear.
It could be a truly awesome game if blizzard weren’t such a money-grubbing bunch of pricks, like all the other big game publishers, and I bet a huge number of those 11 million are accounts that they banned in one of their big showy “Look! We got rid of bots” things they do every once in a while, between letting the bots run riot for months on end.
Needs private servers with the full content, and not just an instant L70 and all the epics you want.
…Hello everybody, I am an Addict.
Now that I have admitted I have a problem, we can continue.
I’ve been an avid WoW player for about three years, and I still consider the game, though ends up wasting alot of time, fun.. it is still an over all good game. That may be do to the constant changes and patches that blizzard continues to put out to make it interesting, but for me it’s simply about the player versus player environment, though there is alot of fun to be had doing the quests as well (That is if you actually take the time to read what they are and say, there’s a lot to appreciate in the witty comments and such the random NPCs make.
My biggest backing on WOW is that it’s also a very, what I will loosely say “Social” game, where you kind of feel like you’re in a giant chat box with dragons swords and killing… I often find myself logging on for a good amount of time running around in circles in game, while talking to various people.
This is no different then sitting on AIM or Myspace for hours talking to your friends, in fact it seems more entertaining that way for me :) So I shall continue to support the game mostly…
(If you play it already, however I will not encourage ANYBODY to join it now, the game is a curse and will suck you in and waste away.. it’s like meth, and yes your teeth will fall out. :) For me it’s going down hill with the new expansion and soon i will simply be paying 15$ a month to have a fun instant messenger… screw you blizzard)
Blizzard also does not spend the money they earn from its however million customers, in the best ways, considering the in game and out of game support is pretty crumy (grant it the out of game is much better then some others I’ve tried to deal with.) I’m sure there are other flaws that I don’t feel like calling out do to the lack of motivation.
Lastly! I still manage to keep a real social life as well, and have friends that don’t play WOW. <3
Nice article; you’ve generated a lot of interest.
As a former 3+ year player of WoW (clean 4 months) I have to admit I’m feeling the nicotine-like pangs to reactivate.
I had a love/hate relationship with WoW: I love the people I met and developed friendships with ingame – some of which I have kept. I had a blast when we were all able to play together. I was a guild officer and built and ran our guild website, too. That was a great learning experience.
WoW has increasingly become a grind and the customer service more deaf. The more time you spend at the level cap, the clearer it becomes. I hated that…and a push began to make an eSport out of this (previously deep) MMO.
This game is so broken from a PvP standpoint, it’s ridiculous. These days you can expect to get a character to level cap before the 30 hour mark. Expect to be playing roughly as long to make your equipment competitive in PvP…if you’re able to keep a group long enough *and* play well enough.
I acknowledge my needs as a player changed in this time: I went from a hardcore raider to a semi-casual raider/PvPer. I’ll acknowledge Blizzard put “welfare epics” in the game so less avid players could buy the necessary gear (unlike previous systems which essentially meant you had 3 people playing one account in a battleground 24/7). What was not addressed was class balance…this is actually very, very important if they want to be a viable long-term eSport competitor.
Which brings me to my PvP gripe: You spend so much time leveling/equipping your character that if you make a wrong character choice along the way, you might as well start over if you’re not the flavor of the month overpowered spec and class.
That’s disappointing.