Recruit-a-Friend is Going on Hiatus

[MiRai]

For many years, Recruit-a-Friend (RaF) was a very attractive benefit in the sense that it gave 300% increased experience while leveling, and it greatly helped everyone, not only multiboxers, level their characters through the long haul of levels that are currently in the game today. Unfortunately, late January of 2018, Blizzard nerfed the experience that RaF gave (https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/21342575/changes-to-recruit-a-friend-now-live), without giving much advance or reason as to why, and so it's been quite lackluster for the past ~16 months.

Well, as of today, Blizzard has announced that they're going to be discontinuing the current iteration of RaF (https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/22938871/recruit-a-friend-is-going-on-hiatus), only to replace it with a new version that is "even more rewarding" shortly after the system is put on pause on June 11th, 2019. What other benefits they might be able to offer new players, other than bonus1 experience, mounts, and pets, is yet to be seen, but let's hope that it's something useful to players who are actually looking to level their characters.

1 50% "bonus" experience that doesn't stack with heirlooms is hardly bonus experience.

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/22938871/recruit-a-friend-is-going-on-hiatus

[thedevilyouknow]

i came back to wow at possibly the worst time in regards to leveling and RaF (saying that with no post wrath experience here so...)
RaF had been nerfed before i joined back, scaling changes made doing low level dungeons kinda hard, some nerfed raid grind for the most annoying level brackets, its been rough.

I was hoping to expand to 10 toons to try some raids sometime later but i might just wait to see how these RaF changes go ahead.

[MiRai]

I was hoping to expand to 10 toons to try some raids sometime later but i might just wait to see how these RaF changes go ahead.
I might expect them to wait, at least, 90 days after putting it on pause before bringing it back, just so that all active RaF links would have expired before they re-release the system. Also, some people have brought up a good point, in that they may use it as a "feature" of patch 8.2.5, which will likely be out around September or November, and that should fall in line with my earlier assumption of waiting, at least, 90 days before bringing it back.

However, my guess at the time-frame could be wrong, and I, like others, would love to see a better system for RaF which actually motivates players, both new and established, to use it, released sooner than later. Unfortunately, seeing as they ripped the bonus experience from it before, that almost makes me think that it won't be making a comeback, and that, to be honest, would kinda suck.

[JohnGabriel]

Time for me to panic that I'll lose out on the pet/mount rewards.

[Brandish]

Some people are really screwed by this... in the comments you can see people (who have all the existing rewards mounts and pets) with multiple rewards ready for claiming, which apparently are going to become worthless.

They have made the announcement that it is going away, with very few answers ready for the questions that people are naturally going to have.

The blue Nethaera, when pressed, was at least able to add that one important tidbit:


The new system and the current system are unrelated and you won't be able to use any reward claims you have from the current system in it.

What remains unanswered is whether the existing mounts and pets will be available when RAF makes its come back. Or when it will be back.

This could be handled so much better by them.


On a personal note, I never did RAF and have zero of the rewards. Now I get to decide if I'm going pay to get them all before this RAF goes away. I'll probably have to ask for advice here before I pull any triggers.

[stubbadub3000]

I hate to be so cynical, but there is negative motivation for the company to offer any scheme that affects the attractiveness of paid level boosts.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I hate to be so cynical, but there is negative motivation for the company to offer any scheme that affects the attractiveness of paid level boosts.
Not an unreasonable suggestion, but I'd submit that Blizzard has the data to show the trends in revenue from RAF-to-subscribers vs level boosts. There's really nothing cynical about it; it's just bidness.