Something I'm missing regarding RAF?

[Pazgaz]

I have 5 accounts, without RAF.
I see a lot of people talking about RAFing AGAIN. Do they mean they're going to buy more accounts (after already having 5) just for RAFing? And then what? they keep paying for all the new ones as well?

[Noids]

I know what you mean Paz. I have 5 boxed for a few years now and levelled my first 2 teams before they had RAF. Each subsequent team I levelled without RAF assuming there was no way I could RAF them without having to pay for transfers etc. During the last sale I bought 5 copies for $5 each on the off chance that I might want to RAF a team of Panda monks for MoP thinking I would then transfer them onto my existing accounts.

I guess the way to get away with this as cheaply as possible would be to Raf 2 accounts from 2 existing accounts and chain one of these to one other. That way you have 2 Raffed veteran accounts and only have to pay for transfers from the 3 new accounts. I am not sure if there is a cheaper way to do this or not, provided you don't want to keep more than 5 accounts active at any one time.

I remember one thread where someone mentioned an idea of making it so you could pay to upgrade your account so you could effectively level faster but did not see any blue replies to it on the official forums.

[Pazgaz]

Thanks for the informative reply!
Did you buy 5 vanilla accounts for 5$ each? That would still mean upgrading them if you want to go past 60 I guess.

[Ualaa]

If you were to buy/use new accounts...

You could take three of your existing five.
One would be the "booster".
And two would be referring accounts.
So you have A: Booster, B: Existing #2, C: Existing #3, D: New #4, E: New #5.
A
B > D
C > E

Then you boost BCDE, with A.
That gets you new toons on B/C, in 1/3rd the leveling time.
And once RAF ends, throw away the new accounts...

And once you're done with B/C, repeat the process with your other two existing accounts.
Call them B/C again, with D/E being the "disposable" new accounts.

That would work well, if you're wanting to add say Mages, Warlocks, Druids, Paladins and Priests to your accounts.
Because during RAF, all you did was Shamans and Hunters, thinking you wouldn't want anything else down the road.






I can also see someone wanting to play with other boxers.
But not wanting to move 54 characters across servers and possibly factions too.

So instead, they put all of their heirlooms on one character.
Who takes the maximum amount of gold possible.
And has their bank stuffed with sellables which are as valuable as possible.

Their other accounts, beyond this one, as moved to "inactive" status.
They're still there, if they ever want to return to their original server.
And really it will only cost one transfer and possibly one faction change, to restore everything to how it was.

So you buy four new accounts.
And have a booster account, with only a single toon on it.
The existing account with Booster is A.
The four new accounts are BCDE.
And the RAF pattern is:
A > B > C
A > D > E

RAF like crazy.
If you boost four toons on BCDE, then A ends up with six toons from granted levels.
B/D also get six toons.
C/E only have the four toons.

But you can do character transfers to even things out.
And nothing says you have to boost four and only four, in your three months.

[Pazgaz]

Information overload!

But to sum it all up, if I want to RAF while keeping my 5 "main" accounts, the best way for me would be to follow Ualaa's first suggested option. That means buying a total of 4 accounts for RAFing purposes only (2 at a time), and use one of my current accounts as booster. To get the most out of RAF I'll probably need to upgrade the accounts to WotLK.
First thought was "fuck no! too expensive". Then I thought about the time it took me to get the current team to 77 without heirlooms or RAF and it seems like a good deal all of a sudden
Guess I need to sit down with pen and paper and plan accounts/chars. Any tips for that?

Also, a bit off topic, how do you handle DKs? I mean they start at 55 and by the time they leave their zone they are 57-58 iirc. Do you level a healer for them to the same level, or just take a high level healer from the fifth account?

[valle2000]

Also, a bit off topic, how do you handle DKs? I mean they start at 55 and by the time they leave their zone they are 57-58 iirc. Do you level a healer for them to the same level, or just take a high level healer from the fifth account?

If you mean a DK-team + healer, I used my RAF grant-level bonuses to quickly make a pally catch up.
Or you could make 5 DK and another team with e.g 5 druids. When reaching 55-60 one DK can switch place with one of them giving you 4dk+druid and 1dk+4druids.

[Ualaa]

I went with 5x DK's, and moved a Paladin onto the team.
Then switched to a Priest.
And ended up switching back to the Pally.

If you RAF, you level 1-80 in approximately 1/3rd the time.
If you do this twice, its 1/3rd plus 1/3rd, or around 2/3rds normal time... which is still a huge bonus.
Plus you get the granted levels.

You would need to purchase the accounts, which is the true cost.
When you pay for the first month of game time, the referring account receives a month free.
So that is essentially, free.
The second month (and the third) is useful if you still want to level toons (but you can boost a full account of teams, inside a month with a mediocre geared level 85 anything).
The second month is more a case of wanting the RAF Rocket or not.