Blizzard announced some great offers for recruiting a friend to play world of warcraft. Good, this keep the player base evolving, and I think its an OK thing to offer. The official FAQ page is pretty handy, and worth a read, then the whinging, and the place where its supposed to be discussed which has reached 35 pages.

• You and your friend will earn triple the experience when grouped together!
• For every two levels of experience your friend earns, they can grant one level of experience to any one of your characters of lower level than your friend.
• You and your friend will have the ability to summon each other from any point in the world, once per hour.

Edit: Blizzard has also sent a promo about the Recruit Offer. So even if players are not already thinking of doing it, now you have a direct incentive.

I was really excited to see an email from Blizzard, but alas it was only this. If it was a Beta key, I’d be whooping from the rooftops.

I’m looking at my email list wondering who I can encourage into the game now, which is exactly the response this is designed to invoke. Yes, a new multi-boxer will get a boost from this, but really its all about player recruitment. More players make for more opportunities. There is already plenty of diversity in the player base, and now we will hopefully have a few fresh recruits too (insert joke about fresh meat / noob for the WoW machine here…).

The mount is cool, and a collector’s item. Just like all the neat stuff offered by the cards and such; this is in no way game breaking.

Is it retrospective?

Nope, but please stop whinging about changes like this not being back-tracked. I know it would be nice, but that is the nature of the beast. Blizzard also could not bandage your bruised ego from when the mounts went to Level 30. This should be looked at as an improvement for the future of the game, not a slight against the folks who already play.

You have to play together.

The bonus only applies if you are grouped, same level, and working as a team.

Newbie can give levels away, which is wonderful.

This means the more experienced player can have a quick step too, making both toons get through the “old world” content faster. Fantastic, the less time in STV the better.

Lasty…

I’ve also read a lot of posts along the line of “this is ruining the game because…“. IMHO the folks who whinge and think it always has to be the same as when they played through are doing more to keep the game from improving that offers like this.

Harden up you wusses.