Blizzard Beefs up World of Warcraft's Recruit-a-Friend 165
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.
Um... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but is this really that big of a piece of news?
A few of the features mentioned in the article, like the free game time, have been there for quite some time already.
multiboxing anyone? (Score:1, Insightful)
this would offer some real benefits to anyone thinking about running multiple accounts. The ninety day xp boost could get even the casual multiboxer to sixty in that time.
@work. Iphone. Anon.
Its a great game (Score:2, Insightful)
But I still won't buy the expansion. Playing though the last one burned me out. Perhaps if there was more new innovation, and not just the same thing in a new package I might.
I'd want a more in-depth crafting system, and a means to create my own content. And a more persuasive reason to participate in world PvP. The entire culture is based around grinding for the best gear. Why? Because its there, and for no other reason. Hardly a motivating reason after doing it for 3 years.
Shameless (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First hit is free... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Um... (Score:4, Insightful)
What's interesting is that this was announced around the same time EA Mythic announces their Warhammer Online launch [warhammeronline.com]. Also, reports of their open beta progrem is set to begin August 15.
I think what's going on here is that Acti-lizzard is trying to cork up any potential bleeding that they see in the coming months by grabbing as many remaining players that haven't started an MMO as they can before there is an exodus to Warhammer Online. With the November-December holiday shopping time-frame approaching, they want to make sure they not only retain the top spot, but also have the other MMOs buried to obscurity.
The game IS boring at 20-60 (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually I agree with fast 20-60.
After playing one faction then the other, if you want to raise another class at least you'll waste less time on content already know!
Re:I've got a better program (Score:2, Insightful)
I still don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it's just me, but I still don't get the "race to level 70" mentality.
1. Essentially the levels 1 to 69 are the actual game content. (Well, ok, plus a couple of things you do at level 70.) That's the actual quests, story, exploration, etc, to be done.
After that, the game is over and you're essentially stuck into an endless tarpit of an endgame grind. There's nothing more to do that repeat the same few things over and over and over again, just to keep you busy until the next expansion pack is released. Not even particularly smart or diverse things. Some classes can get through months of it without pressing more than one button, or maybe two.
And whatever you get from it, is fully useless in the rest of the game, since everything else was designed to be done (and any non-instance stuff: soloed) by someone with green gear. So any "OMG, EPIC STUFF!" you get in a grind instance, isn't needed for anything except more grinding.
But at any rate, that's what happens after you played and finished the actual game. And it's not even much fun. And it makes a whole lot of people depressed and unhappy, who were perfectly content before getting stuck in it. (Just listen the drama in any raiding guild, and then you tell me if that sounds happy.)
Yet some people are apparently in a hurry to skip the actual game levels, only to get stuck in that endgame grind? And some are even willing to pay for it or risk banishment? (By buing Glider, multiple accounts, buying power-levelling from some Chinese guy, etc.) WTH? It's on par with paying someone to watch a movie for you, just so you can come back and watch the last battle in a loop, for a year. As I was saying: WTH?
So, yay, now they can compress the actual game to 24 hours. Heh.
2. The game is already fast to level, even when soloing and not being particularly good at it. You can (and God knows enough people do) get to level 70 without having every had to function in a group, or do your job in an instance. You see "healers" who never fully understood that they aren't mages. You see warriors who still think that their e-penis size depends on attacking a different mob from the rest of the group, to show how tough they are. You see hunters who still think that when the going gets tough, they're supposed to set the fucking pet on aggressive, I quote, "so it can protect the other members of the group too." Etc.
More importantly, you see people who haven't yet figured out how the game really works, and are still operating on wild mis-understandings or basing decisions on strategies on their own "what kind of things would make sense" fantasies, instead of how the game actually works. You see people who haven't yet figured out what all those icons do, and how to combine them.
I swear to god, one hunter still thought that he can walk backwards to keep a mob at a range and use his ranged attack, like with the ultra-slow mobs at levels 1 to 9. _There_ it works to take a step backwards and shoot the mob again before he reaches you. At level 70, it doesn't work. So the retard would run backwards through two extra groups, and actually be proud of his "footwork". The idea of disengaging, feigning death and letting the tank do his job (or not ending up needing that in the first place) never occured to him.
I used to even think that such people must have been power-levelled, but in the meantime I know a couple who got to level 70 fair and square, without learning anything.
Do we really need more of those, and worse at that? Someone getting to level 70 in 24 hours, probably hasn't even had the time to assimilate what all those icons do, or wth is happening around them. Assimilate it all for 2-3 character? Heh.
So ok, let's even believe that they're eager to get into the group action at the end. (Yeah, right. Most people who were swearing that grinding MC is the meat of the game, went back to soloing instantly after BC got launched.) Ok, let's believe that. What do they hope to bring to a group at that level? How do they expect t
Re:Active Accounts (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems like the number of people online at any given time has shot way up lately... And lots of people have re-activated their accounts to get ready for the expansion.
This program seems like a money grab to divert some of the cash that goes to power-leveling services back to blizzard.
Re:I still don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Experiencing the content from 1-70 once is nice.
On the second run through, you can visit some areas and do some quests you haven't done before.
On the third time, you might still find a few areas you haven't played, but you'll be doing a lot of repeat content.
By the 4th time, you've done it all, you're just trying to hit 70 to do end-game content and gearing (pvp, arenas, dungeons).
The distribution of content and leveling speed is also that of a triangle or pyramid. At low levels, there's a lot of content.
Eg. on horde there are 4 unique starting areas, and another 4 unique starting areas for alliance.
For levels 10-20 there are 3 unique areas per faction (so 6 total, down from 8 for 0-10).
For 20-30 there are maybe 3 areas, but by now many aren't unique to a single faction, so maybe 4-5 total.
From 30-40 and onwards there are only 2-3 areas you can choose from, and before the recent leveling buff, you had to do all content in several of the areas to get to the next level bracket.
So on my 2nd character I leveled, all content from lvl 40+ had already been done by my first character. The only real benefit on subsequent characters is that you know the areas better and can complete quests a little faster.
The grind to 70 is so painfully slow that a lot of people prefer to only level up to 19, 29, 39, etc. and then 'twink' that character with the best gear and enchants. Characters in any X0-X9 bracket (eg. 10-19) can play PVP with only players in that same level bracket.
Re:Shameless (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Shameless (Score:3, Insightful)
[...] or (and more likely to happen) you decide to multibox.
Give us a break, man. Multiboxing is not even a blip on the radar. I played WoW since open beta, and I've seen ONE 5-boxer so far. I see 2-boxers every now and then, at the average rate of once a month (just guessing though). To say that most people will use this promotion to x-box is to completely disregard the fact that x-boxing is difficult, expensive, time-consuming, and generally requires the kind of dedication to the cause a weekend gamer does not have. As others pointed out, many WoW players cannot even learn to utilize their class by the time they cap.
The reward is not that significant. Zebra mount and leveling help? Who cares. Leveling your main is actually done well in WoW. Props to folks at Blizzard for striking the iron while it is still hot.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering that videogames have been around for about one generation, then yes, this is the first generation to overcome that stereotype. Or are you so young that for you, videogames have always existed? In which case, don't worry, every generation thinks the same thing.
It still doesn't enlighten me much (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I suppose I'm not going to tell you what you like in a game. If that's how you play it, fair enough.
It still doesn't really answer my main question: why would anyone want to skip those training stages, then?
Using your analogy (not that I see it that way, but ok, I can work with that) it's like wanting to be directly in the championship, without first doing those fundamentals training. If the goal is helping the team achieve that "cup", it makes no sense. Add one complete newbie to a basketball team, and they'll lose the cup. Guaranteed.
It makes some sense if it's about personal glory, as I was saying. You know, for that "I was in the basketball finals" or "I have a level 70 in epic gear!" bragging rights. But for team work and helping the team? I'm just as unconvinced as before. See my examples in the original message, about how well some of those people actually perform in a team.
Training the player isn't even remotely the same thing as training his/her character. A guy that skipped through the game at triple speed, or in some cases was outright power-leveled, is still essentially a newbie in a veteran costume. You can take a guy off the street and put him into a <insert famous basketball team< outfit, and that doesn't really make him fit to play with them.
Ah, but maybe he has experience with another class, which he had played to level 70? Fair enough, but that's like skipping to the football/soccer cup, just because you were once in the winning basketball team. It's barely a notch above the newbie in the previous paragraph.
Plus, even a real pro sports team doesn't play only in the finals. If someone doesn't like playing the pre-season plays too, and training in between plays too, why are they in that sport in the first place?
So on the whole, I'm still quite as unenlightened as before when it comes to the race to skip levels.
testing (Score:1, Insightful)
testing
testing (Score:1, Insightful)
testing testing