Recruit-a-Friend Nerfed

[MiRai]

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/21342575/changes-to-recruit-a-friend-now-live

The 200% bonus is now only 50%, and heirloom experience no longer stacks with the RaF bonus. If you currently have RaF, then these changes do not affect you. If you're creating a new set of RaF after this, then you will be affected.

[Ritley]

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/21342575/changes-to-recruit-a-friend-now-live

The 200% bonus is now only 50%, and heirloom experience no longer stacks with the RaF bonus. If you currently have RaF, then these changes do not affect you. If you're creating a new set of RaF after this, then you will be affected.

One can only assume this is to curtail people using RaF to level the new allied races faster once they go live. Seems like an overreaction on Blizzard's part. What a shame.

[Fat Tire]

Raf is completely useless for boxers now since heirloom exp bonus is 70% iirc.

[dorkseid]

Holy crap

[Sservis]

Raf is completely useless for boxers now since heirloom exp bonus is 70% iirc.

70% was possible, sort of. 55% on heirlooms, and a guild banner for 15%. It requires 15,000 daily quests by guild, but for the player only requires friendly with guild and guild rep tabards are BoA, so easy to unlock for new characters. Even though it has a 10 minute cooldown, could round robin it on the team.

[Vokerr]

Even though they state - "the maximum XP boost you will see from today onwards is 50%."
The theory of them adding XP Potions to the Blizz store just to make BANK isn't sounding to outrageous right now.
As they did remove obtaining Rapid Minds from this recent Christmas event now this...

[Pocahuntess]

I am baffled! Where is Blizzard heading with these XP changes everywhere? Do they really see a possible uptick in new players from this? They could come up with some other gate to increase the time played on Allied Races.

[Pocahuntess]

Nevermind...

[Sservis]

I am baffled! Where is Blizzard heading with these XP changes everywhere? Do they really see a possible uptick in new players from this? They could come up with some other gate to increase the time played on Allied Races.

All new players get one boost as part of the most current expansion. This only impacts people who want multiple leveled characters. Specifically, making allied races rarer. It doesn't necessarily presage any new sale items. The first few alts, the speed isn't a big deal, it's "new" content. But repeating the same content over and over gets stale for those who want many alts. It seems fairly obvious that this is a coordinated change. Slower leveling is a desired goal and the obvious reason is allied races.

[Peri Helion]

Well that’s just effing great.

i should have pulled the trigger: had been playing with just two raf accounts while I worked out my boxing setups. Last time I got this close they got rid of /follow in battlegrounds.

So I guess I’m the problem - whenever I get the free time to finally dedicate to multiboxing they nerf some aspect of it.

But I can look at the bright side, I won’t be dropping a bunch of money on the game for the other 3 accounts and I only paid one month in advance for the second account. More money for Beer!

[Peri Helion]

Ok - aside from my whining about how this personally impacted my gaming plans, here are some business thoughts (i posted these on the blizz thread as my main Dalean).

This is a classic mobile app "timer/soft currency/hard currency pinch" monetization model.

The timer in this case is the "time to level", which has been made more onerous by increasing XP, increasing mob HP, decreasing RAF bonus, nerfing Heirloom items, and capping total XP bonus.

Players can bypass the timer through either soft currency (grinding time to level), or hard currency and spend $$ for a boost.

The irony for me is that most people who will want to pay for a boost would do it if the grind time were 15 hours (pre 7.3.5, full RAF, full pre-nerfed Heirlooms, level 110 booster, no XP bonus cap), or the 45-70 hours it is now post 7.3.5.

Further, in mobile apps this model works because they have no monthly recurring fee, so if they don't pinch the player to make a hard currency purchase to clear a timer they get no money - so literally the developer has nothing to lose.

Here, if the pinch is too hard, you will "leak" paid monthly subscriptions at some percentage (even if it isn't high, every 4 months lost subscription cancels one boost revenue event).

And as I said above, I cant see this pinch actually increasing the number of boosts by that much.

Additionally - RAF has nearly no value. And that is bad for Activision since RAF was a way to entice more players and monthly subscriptions.

I see activision bleeding some small level of existing accounts (not large, but enough to erode any boost revenue increase) and canibalizing future revenues from RAF for current revenues from boost.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Man, the official thread on that change is *harsh*. Also, notice how all the faces in the official RAF nerf thread's background header image look angry? /APPROPRIATE

[ebony]

Probs getting phased out it's not been updated in years.

FTP soon???


Am sure at this point there making more money from looms then RAF

Next we see is loom venders right when you login with a AH npc to sell your token!! $$$$$$$$$ ( might work out better to bring the cost of tokens down...)

[Sservis]

As an update the guild banners do stack with heirlooms. I've tested up to 50% + 15%, still missing shipyard rings, so I can't test 55% in heirlooms. So for boosting, you can get +65% if you round robin the banners (and your boostees quickly acquire them if the guild has them as it only requires friendly)

[Sservis]

Tradeoffs in various leveling methods (7.3.5 after RAF changes)

I debated putting this in a new thread, but it's germane to the current situation.

tl;dr - Depending on your marginal time value, Buying Boosts, Starting New Accounts, RAF and Transfers, or Heirlooms are your best option. If you're willing to use new accounts, only Buying Boosts and Starting New Accounts are really in the conversation.


Goals

Because I like puzzles and math, I've been thinking about the tradeoffs in various leveling methods. Below are the rough costs of various options to fill out one existing account on one realm with each class at 100 in terms of $ and time. I am ignoring a DH. I also will assume that doing multiple accounts at a time is desired. If only a single is desired things tilt towards Option Boost more.

I will be quoting rates per hour as the tradeoff between $ and time. If you can find a part time job or consulting gig (or better, work overtime) this is the take home rate that's required to make this option worse than straight boosting. Note that the numbers are highly dependent on being able to use each option to it's maximum efficiency (so groups of 5) If this doesn't happen, then options with RAF or hourly costs are less valuable and should be lower in the list.*

Also see the *** note about how $ costs can be reduced with $ -> ebay TCG mounts -> gold -> battle.net balance.


Summary

Note that if you can earn more (take home after taxes) in a job (over time/second job/extra consulting/whatever) than the quoted figure, it will take fewer hours to achieve your goal if you spend the time outside WoW.

$440, 0 hours - Option Expansion Boost - better for straight $ cost, but more hassle. If you do this, the hourly rates below drop as about $200 in the savings figure disappears.
$660, 0 hours - Option Boost
$40/$70, 40 hours - Option New Accounts (RAF) - Saves $600, costs 40 hours more, $15.00/hour. ($10.00/hour vs Option Expansion boost)
$315/$345, 40 hours - Option Transfer - Saves $320, but takes 40 more hours $8.00/hour This is higher if you fund transfers with battle.net balance, although that has a cost too. ($3.00/hour vs Option Expansion boost)
$0, 100 hours - Option Heirloom - Saves $660, costs 100 hours more, $6.60/hours ($4.40/hour vs Option Expansion boost)
$165/$195 120 hours - Option RAF existing with transfers - Saves $480, but takes 120 hours more. $4.00/hour ($2.67/hour vs Option Expansion boost)
$40/$70, 180 hours - Option RAF existing - Saves $600, but takes 180 more hour. s $3.33/hour ($2.22/hour vs Option Expansion boost)



Detailed cost explanations (not in the same order)


$660, 0 hours - Option Boost - buy 11 boosts




$0, 100 hours - Option Heirloom - 40 hours** to 90, 6.5 to 100 after that is 40 * 10 + 20 * 1 + 6.5*11 or 491.5 hours, call it 500. Doing 5 accounts at once means this is 100 hours per account. I'm going to assume boosting is slightly faster, but more mind numbing and ends up about the same in terms of time.




$440, 0 hours - Option Expansion Boost - Buy the battle.net and expansions, they come with a boost. Regular prices are $20 and $50, so more expensive, but if purchased on sale, cost is in the $40 range per character. This does require churning your battle.net account with adding new accounts, using the ticket system to delete them, repeat.




$40/$70, 40 hours - Option New Accounts (RAF) - This is faster in that with circle RAF, only the first set needs to be leveled to 90. So 40 * 1 + 12 * 8+ 6.5*10 = 201.5 hours, I'm going to call this 200. This can be done 5 accounts at a time, so 40 hours per account. However you are on the hook for new accounts. Sale/regular prices listed.




$315/$345, 40 hours - Option Transfer - Done with the same method as Option New Accounts (RAF), but transferred to existing accounts. This is worse than Option New Accounts, but you might be tied to your existing accounts. Note that you may be able to fund the transfers with battle.net balance or sales and the $ cost could be less. Also acquiring the battle.net balance likely has an opportunity cost that should be factored in if used.***




$40/$70, 180 hours - Option RAF existing - Existing account has a RAF link created with 1 additional account. Level to 90, 7x 40 * 7 + 6.5 * 11 + DK time = 351.5 hours. This can be done on two accounts at a time, going to call it 180 hours per account. This is slightly better if the boost can be used




$165/$195, 120 hours - Option RAF existing with transfers - Similar to Option RAF existing, but transfer the newly created characters over. Level to 90 4x + DK time uses 5 transfers, 40 * 4 + 6.5 * 11 = 231.5, Can be done on two accounts at once, going to call this 120 hours. This is likely better than the previous option as it saves 60 hours at a cost of $120. ($2.00/hour equivalency)



Footnotes

* Hours generally multiply by 5 if you only want a single account, although for the RAF existing options only multiply by about 2.

** 20 hours to 60 based on Mirai, 20 more to 90 and 6.5 from 90 to 100 are complete guesses on my part. If better numbers should be used, let me know what the should be and why.

*** All $ costs can be offset with Battle.net balance. For instance, a buying TCG mounts, reselling for gold on the AH, buying tokens does yield positive value. As a quick check, there's currently a Spectral Tiger card on ebay for $1,150 from a decently reputable seller, yields at least twice the gold cap (if sold on the auction hall, probably more through private sales). 19,000,000 gold turns into slightly more than 110 WoW Tokens, which turns into $1650 in Battle.net balance. Effectively giving a 33% discount on any of the dollar costs above. More value can likely be quickly achieved if mounts that sell below the gold cap are used since their full value can be realized on the AH.

[Zartok]

Holy S*hit, I'm so glad that I did the hassle of leveling every class on the accounts to 90... To level up new teams now if your goal is max level content sounds like a huge grind D:

[Fat Tire]

*** All $ costs can be offset with Battle.net balance. For instance, a buying TCG mounts, reselling for gold on the AH, buying tokens does yield positive value. As a quick check, there's currently a Spectral Tiger card on ebay for $1,150 from a decently reputable seller, yields at least twice the gold cap (if sold on the auction hall, probably more through private sales). 19,000,000 gold turns into slightly more than 110 WoW Tokens, which turns into $1650 in Battle.net balance. Effectively giving a 33% discount on any of the dollar costs above. More value can likely be quickly achieved if mounts that sell below the gold cap are used since their full value can be realized on the AH.

Thinking outside of the box. I love it.
------

It does look like there may be changes coming -

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20761057208?page=19#post-372

[sethlan]

Oh crap, thats fine i have plenty of teams, hunters at 90+ shamans, 100+locks and DKS. to be honest i hate leveling. I remember playing shamans for a very long time and my hunters... Now i'm coming back on my main 110 lock and 9 of them are 102+

[Sservis]

Holy S*hit, I'm so glad that I did the hassle of leveling every class on the accounts to 90... To level up new teams now if your goal is max level content sounds like a huge grind D:

Getting to 90 isn't that painful. It's just not as quick as it used to be.

$660/account or 100 hours/account on existing accounts. With new accounts 40 hours/account is doable with RAF. See my wall of text above for details. In previous estimations of effort, I thought it took about 15 hours/account on new accounts.

For existing accounts the previous time would be a lot closer to the 100 hours/account as RAF is effectively lost, heirlooms still exist as they were before, so minimal changes.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

It does look like there may be changes coming -

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20761057208?page=19#post-372
I...I'm not sure...did they even read the thread? The only sentence that made sorta sense to me was "if leveling is too slow, we’d rather address that in the game itself than have Refer-A-Friend be some kind of bizarre workaround." But that assumes that the vast majority of new players recruited through RAF want to lazily surf through the old content. How they could read "we dislike that you level so fast that you get hit by the quest chain breadcrumb lockout" and construe that as "we don't like leveling this fast" instead of "we like leveling this fast but we hate not being able to progress to the next hub in the zone because we haven't done the 49 chain quests that lead to it first" is beyond me. There must be other primary factors in the discussion that prevents people not privy to the marketing/playerbase/sales data from connecting the dots. IMO, it's starting to sound a lot like another version of Ghostcrawler's raid-or-die or "You think you want fast leveling of alts but you really don't." I'm sure I'll keep playing but it'll definitely make me think a lot harder about the ROI of leveling new alts.

[Sservis]

I...I'm not sure...did they even read the thread? The only sentence that made sorta sense to me was "if leveling is too slow, we’d rather address that in the game itself than have Refer-A-Friend be some kind of bizarre workaround."

Replying in that thread made me realize that making Heirlooms + RAF function the same as RAF alone for XP is a good change. Otherwise players without both can't level with players with both (taking off heirlooms is a bad option). The bonus though should be higher than 50% in my opinion.

[moosejaw]

Man, the start to 2018 in WoW has turned into a "How Green is My Valley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Green_Was_My_Valley_(film))" moment. This crap just seems so surreal. Unbelievable actually. I'll keep playing and doing things that make me happy and provide enjoyment.

If you haven't seen John Ford's adaptation of the book I'll summarize quickly. A quaint Welsh village is turned into a sh!thole. Shown over the life of a boy all the way through to his golden years.

[Darth0]

What's disappointing about all these changes is the lack of communication from Blizzard that they are even coming in the first place. Moreover, the recruit-a-friend changes. It's like they come out and say we are making these changes and, oh by-the-way, we made it effective yesterday.

I am glad that I signed up for the service a few weeks ago, so I get grandfathered in, but a little more notice would have gone along way. They might have even seen a small sales bump for the people who were considering going that route.

Poor communication of changes to a game has killed more games than I can count. Lol. It's not even the changes themselves that do it. Sigh, oh well.

Just my two cents.

[Peri Helion]

DISREGARD THIS POST - IT IS NOT ACCURATE AND WILL NOT WORK

Wanted to clarify for anyone considering RAF that might have read this from the WoW RAF Benefits page (https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/11009)


Note: Players who have an existing link from before January 22nd will continue to earn 200% extra experience. When grouped with multiple players you have recruited, your bonus experience matches the player with the highest bonus.

I had two accounts linked on 1/14 that had the old bonus, and last week pulled the trigger on 3 more to get that "grandfathered" bonus.

A-B on 1/14, then B-C, C-D, D-E on 2/5.

However - only A and B were getting the 200% bonus XP and stacking heirloom bonus. C, D and E were leveling at a rate about 4.5 times slower.

Blizzard explained they have to RAF from the same sub-account, not just within a battle.net account. So to get the bonus I would have had to hub and spoke it like:

A-B, A-C, A-D, and A-E

So if anyone has an old RAF they are thinking of adding onto - balance your decision to get the extra XP Bonus against how your granted levels will flow.

[MiRai]

Blizzard explained they have to RAF from the same sub-account, not just within a battle.net account. So to get the bonus I would have had to hub and spoke it like:

A-B, A-C, A-D, and A-E

So if anyone has an old RAF they are thinking of adding onto - balance your decision to get the extra XP Bonus against how your granted levels will flow.
Wait, so... You're saying that if we currently have an active, grandfathered RaF with a set of accounts, that the "recruiter" accounts can re-recruit new accounts and re-gain the grandfathered 300% bonus—essentially allowing for an endless chain of re-RaF'ing to keep the 300% bonus?

If so, I need to try this once I'm back into the mix of things because I'd love to refresh my ~40 remaining days back to 90 when they get low.

[sothis]

I went on to afk leveling with a ww-monk with ox statue and chi orbit.
This might be a bit offtopic but for people that are struggeling with the new leveling speed and are not questing for fun but rather to get it done, it might be still worth a shot.
The wetland orc and drachkin farm made me go from 20-60 in like 6 hours with grandfathered raf bonus, im looking for a similar spot for 60-80. if someone is interested in this, ill share my expirience later down the line.

[Peri Helion]

DISREGARD THIS POST - IT IS NOT ACCURATE AND WILL NOT WORK
- THE GM I QUOTED WAS WRONG


Wait, so... You're saying that if we currently have an active, grandfathered RaF with a set of accounts, that the "recruiter" accounts can re-recruit new accounts and re-gain the grandfathered 300% bonus—essentially allowing for an endless chain of re-RaF'ing to keep the 300% bonus?

If so, I need to try this once I'm back into the mix of things because I'd love to refresh my ~40 remaining days back to 90 when they get low.

MiRai - I am not very experienced, and certainly could have misunderstood what they were saying - but I took it to mean that once the first RAF expired at 90 days (for me March 13th), the remaining time on the post nerf RAF would revert back to 50% bonus and no heirloom stacking (for those other 3 accounts from March 13th to April 5th).

Here is the blizzard response (if this is against forum rules please delete).


Game Master Blanzwhallan here to tackle your issue! Thank you so much for your patience while I worked my way to your ticket. I can see you're having some issues with the Recruit a Friend link! I've had some time to look over everything and can explain what happened here.

As you know, and pointed out, if the link existed prior to January 22nd, the 200% experience bonus was kept. If they were linked afterwards, it was the new, 50% bonus. The part where it becomes confusing is 'When grouped with multiple players you have recruited, your bonus experience matches the player with the highest bonus.'

Basically, we'll lay it out like this:
WoW1 recruited WoW2 on 2018-01-13
WoW2 recruited WoW3 on 2018-02-06
WoW3 recruited WoW4 on 2018-02-06
WoW4 recruited WoW5 on 2018-02-06

This means 2 out of 5 of these accounts receive 200% bonus, while 3 out of 5 of these accounts will receive 50% bonus.

WoW1 and WoW2, when partied, will receive 200% bonus since they were recruited before January 22nd. WoW2 and WoW3(WoW3 and WoW4, and WoW4 and WoW5), when partied, will receive 50% bonus since they were recruited after January 22nd. If WoW3, WoW4, and WoW5 is included in the WoW1 and WoW2 party, WoW3, WoW4 and WoW5 will still receive 50% bonus, while WoW2 will receive 200% bonus. This 200% bonus does not chain onto others or stack, because they were still recruited after January 22nd.

This 'grouped with multiple players you have recruited, your bonus experience matches the player with the highest bonus' would have been more relevant if WoW1 had recruited all accounts - but instead it was recruited in a chain from main account to WoW5.

That explanation out of the way, I've ensured all the accounts are properly linked, and all the correct bonuses are being applied. The best thing I can suggest is level WoW1 with WoW2, and leveling WoW3, WoW4 and WoW5 together.

Despite this being a bit confusing, I hope I was able to clear everything up for you! Take care.

[Peri Helion]

Ok - not even sure the GM above was correct now.

I chose to RAF 3 new accounts as they described above (all from WoW1), but still only WoW1 and WoW2 are getting 200% bonus with heirloom bonus, while WoW6, 7 and 8 are only getting 50% bonus.

Opened another ticket to see if the RAF bonus is simply “not linked/applied” and that 50% was my heirloms or if in fact it doesn’t matter how you RAF post nerf, you’re screwed no matter what (despite what their website and the GM said).

[Peri Helion]

I have officially reached my limit.

New GM, new response. Nobody can ever get more than the current nerfed RAF bonus through RAF. Anyone who read my earlier post from the GM who claimed otherwise - disregard.

The only positive is the new GM offered to refund me the cost of the new accounts, which I took him up on.

Once that processes I have to say the constant instability has robbed me of having any predictability about how the game will act, and whether I can achieve the things I want to do as a casual player;


Scaling
RAF Nerf
Boosts don't get you up to 800 in professions
Heirlooms nerfed
Dungeon XP nerfed
etc
Whatever they come up with next week
etc


Its not that any of these by themselves, or even collectively, is breaking my fun. But every 3 days I figure out how I want to achieve my goals they change the assumptions again, and the time/effort is wasted.

[ebony]

Well profs only go to 100 in bfa so probs why there not getting boosted, I would say most of this so hit was to stop players getting that armour fast! When it all dies down they might just do a new raf.