Blizzard responds to criticism regarding the changes to “Recruit a Friend” in WoW. The reasoning seems strange to many players.
When Blizzard weakened the “Recruit a Friend” system of World of Warcraft two days ago, the criticism was immediate. No wonder, instead of 200% additional experience points, there are now only meager 50% bonus. Additionally, the bonus can no longer be combined with heirlooms, which only increased dissatisfaction.
The Community Manager Lore has now released a statement regarding the criticism and explained why these changes were made.
New players would like to experience the old areas together with their friends and “get to know” the game. With a bonus of 200% additional experience points, this was difficult, as areas could never be fully played through. So players were deprived of the chance to “relax” while playing together, as the leveling process was unnecessarily accelerated.
Back then, it was desirable for players to quickly reach the endgame with their friends, but that is no longer necessary today. Because anyone who buys the current expansion gets a free level boost anyway.
However, another issue also played into the decision to modify the “Recruit a Friend” program.
WoW players create second accounts to siphon bonuses
Apparently, there were a lot of players who did not use the “Recruit a Friend” program to actually recruit friends, but rather to benefit themselves. They sent themselves a code and registered a second WoW account. They then played “with themselves” by running two WoW versions in parallel, allowing them to quickly level two characters to max level. After the job was done, the character from the second account was transferred to the first account. If needed, this process was repeated.
According to Community Manager Lore, this practice is best described as “chaotic” and was never intended.
However, they take the feedback to heart and recognize the problem that players would like to progress faster when leveling Twinks. This will be considered in the “future development of the game”.
The developers prefer to solve this problem directly in the game and do not want to implement a bizarre, provisional solution in the form of the “Recruit a Friend” program.
Reactions to Blizzard’s statement are mixed. Some players share the view that “Recruit a Friend” should encourage players to experience the beautiful old areas of WoW together with a friend.
Other players find it a farce that Blizzard reacted this way. They should have thought about the consequences beforehand and offered an alternative for faster leveling before simply weakening the system overnight.
What do you think about the changes to “Recruit a Friend” and Blizzard’s statement? Was the change good and sensible? Or is this just a method to sell more level boosters?
Players even demanded that Blizzard make the level boost cheaper now.
