Recruit-a-Friend Nerfed

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.

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

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...)

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)

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.

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:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sservis

*** 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.

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Thinking outside of the box. I love it.
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It does look like there may be changes coming -

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...ge=19#post-372

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+

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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:

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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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fat Tire

It does look like there may be changes coming -

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...ge=19#post-372

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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.