I received an email this morning regarding Blizzard’s new recruiting program.  The system they had in place before seemed reasonable - a veteran player received a month of free play time for each recruit they referred.  Blizzard just stepped things up to make it ridiculous; veteran players now receive the following benefits:

Free Mount

For each recruit a veteran player recruits they gain a free in game mount.

This is slightly unfair, but definitely the least offensive part of this promotion.  Mounts are so easy to come by these days I don’t think this will get to many people upset.

Summoning Ability (for 90 days):

The veteran player and their recruit will have the ability to summon each other anywhere in Azeroth (below level 60).  It seems this ability will be similar to hearthstones, carrying a one hour cooldown.

This seems like a distinct advantage over ‘normal’ players; if I were still playing I would become upset over this.  There are lots of times that having this ability would have come in handy.  I don’t think it is fair that this ability is only available to those that give Blizzard more money through referrals - as though their 15/month isn’t enough for them already.

Triple Experience (90 days)

While experiencing with your recruit both of you will receive triple experience for both quests and monster kills.  This triple experience can not be stacked with rest exp, or with multiple recruits in the group.

This is an obvious advantage over other players (who don’t recruit people).  Imagine if you were new to WoW and did not recruit anyone.  Even if you played 24/7, you could group with someone one day and they could be 3x your level the next just because they were a recruit.  This would turn me off quickly.

Free Levels (90 days to give)

Literally.  Every two levels the recruit gets, they have the ability to grant a lower level character on the veteran’s account a level.

They literally don’t have to do anything!  It is feasible with this model that a veteran could level up a character to 60 without even leaving their home city.  This is ridiculous!  I don’t know why Blizzard thought this would be a good idea, but it is not.  This will strike up a lot of animosity between ‘normal’ players and people who recruit like crazy.

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I can say one thing for certain - I am happy I quit WoW to return to EQ2 back in early June.  It seems that Blizzard is dead set on making WoW as easy as possible for people. Unfortanetly for them, I think they missed the mark on this one.  I believe this is going to create more ill will between the player base & Blizzard than it will do good.

Why is Blizzard doing this?  Are they sensing that their reign on top of the MMO mountain is coming to an end?  Are they feeling the pressure from the release of WarHammer?  Are they just plan losing it?

I don’t know - but they need to do something to fix this soon.  I will leave you with this thought:

In America each person is created equal, apparently in Azeroth this isn’t the case.  Some people are 3x better off…