Changes to Recruit-A-Friend

In Patch 7.3.5, we made significant changes to the level 1–100 experience to ensure players can better enjoy the stories, quest lines, and zones they want to at their own pace. Because of this, we are adjusting the XP bonus on the Recruit-A-Friend (RAF) program to ensure it reflects the updated pacing of the game as new players level their characters and explore Azeroth.

DYNAMIC LEVELING IN PATCH 7.3.5
As you may have heard, Patch 7.3.5 significantly overhauled the level-up experience in World of Warcraft so that zones from 1–100 will dynamically scale to your character’s level. Why? Over the years, we’ve made multiple changes to adjust the leveling curve—and as a result, the pace of characters’ progress has become significantly out of sync with the content. Players often out-level areas long before they’ve had a chance to complete key stories and quest lines, leading to a less-than-ideal experience.

With this significant update to pacing, the existing Recruit-A-Friend program would no longer provide the best experience for players new to World of Warcraft. Even with scaling zones, triple-speed leveling would mean new players going into dungeons could find themselves overwhelmed by multiple new abilities gained over the course of a single instance run, and might still outpace storylines that help the world make sense and make players feel like they’re part of it—and we want new players to feel at home in Azeroth.

To align the Recruit-A-Friend XP bonus with the upcoming leveling changes, we have reduced the XP boost gained from the Recruit-A-Friend program when playing with a linked friend down from 200% (300% XP vs. base XP) to 50%* (150% XP vs. base XP). We are making these changes to ensure the XP boost doesn’t upset game balance and undermine the experience, while still giving a significant XP bonus to you and a friend as a thank-you for being part of the Recruit-A-Friend program.

RECRUIT-A-FRIEND CHANGES IN FULL

• The XP boost has been reduced from 200% bonus to 50% bonus*, effective today, January 22, 2018.
• If you’re already actively participating in the program, fear not! If you either sent or received an invite before the change went into effect today, once the invite is accepted you and your friend will still receive triple XP* (200% XP bonus) until the link between your accounts expires (90 days from the date the new recruit’s account was first created). Please note: RAF invites expire after seven days.
• Heirloom gear XP bonuses will no longer stack with the RAF boost (i.e., the maximum XP boost you will see from today onwards is 50%). If you were already on the program, Heirloom gear will still stack.

All other rewards are unchanged and yours to enjoy:

• Summon your friend once every 30 minutes.
• 10% bonus reputation from kills that grant reputation.*
• Level granting: for every two levels your friend gains while the accounts are linked, they can grant one level to one of your characters.
• Recruiter rewards, including game time and epic mounts.

*For a full list of the rewards and the in-game criteria for receiving them, visit our RAF In-Game Bonuses page.

Thanks for the feedback and thoughts so far.

The Refer-A-Friend system is intended as an option for players who want to invite a friend to play WoW with them and experience the game together. When it was first introduced, we gave it a hefty bonus to experience gain as a way for both players to reach endgame content as quickly as possible.

Nowadays, purchasing the latest WoW expansion includes a free character boost, so the need to rush your friend to max level is no longer there; you can jump into the latest content with your friend right away. This meant that the only players who were using the Refer-A-Friend system in its intended way – leveling alongside their friend – were those who had decided that they wanted to experience that content together. We realized that, for those players, the 300% XP bonus was a disservice; we were cutting that shared experience short by making them finish it far too quickly.

Now, we certainly recognize that the majority of people using the Refer-A-Friend system before these changes were doing so in order to level alts quickly. If anything, we take that as a strong indication that the system needed to change: the best method to level a character in WoW shouldn’t be “buy a new copy of the game, put it on a separate account, send it a Refer-A-Friend invite, level a new character, and then transfer that character to your primary account when you’re finished.” That’s messy, at best.

That said, we’re certainly taking the feedback about the rate of leveling alts into account as we move forward with the game’s development. We’ve been happy with the changes so far, but 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 to an outstanding issue.