Recruit-a-Friend Nerfed

[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" 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

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.