This is all we were talking about at work today:

Our new Recruit-A-Friend program has added features that reward you even more for bringing your friends into Azeroth™. Recruit-A-Friend and earn:

  • An exclusive ZHEVRA in-game mount* when your friend pays for 60 days of subscription time.
  • 30 Days of FREE** WoW gametime when your friend pays for 30 days of subscription time.
  • 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 ofyour characters of lower level.
  • You and your friend will have the ability to summon each other from any point in the world.

At one point, I think there were 12 people in my office talking about this.  Responses varied from ‘this is a raw deal that cheapens everything I’ve done so far!’ (1 response), “This is the sign of cheapness, of Blizzard finally getting desperate” (1 response), and “Whoa, I’m totally multiboxing THIS shit” (all the rest of us).  I know of at least two people with lapsed accounts have reactivated them since then.

Of those at work, 3 or 4 also said “I was about done with Conan anyway”.  So there’s that.

There was a lot of discussion about motives, oddly enough, even though I think they’re clear.  The most devoted players of WoW are raiders and battleground players who are having a harder and harder time field battles and raid excursions. AND they have an expansion pack in the near future that, for better or for worse, has almost no content below level 70.  Getting more people in, and to max, makes a lot of sense in that light.

Original comments thread is here.