Recruit-a-friend for mounts and levels

If you are someone that plays primarily with another person, the recruit-a-friend program is a pretty decent deal I think.

For $20 you can get a mount, several low-level characters to 90, and a couple thousand gold if you have the time and dedication.

I really enjoy doing this for a number of reasons. One, I love making characters. I’ve long identified as an altoholic. If I can make multiple characters in a game, I’m likely to make the maximum allowed if your game pulls in me. I love trying out various combinations of skills, roles, and races/backgrounds.

Two, my spouse is a pretty big altoholic as well, although slightly less of one than me. That being the case, we usually make characters that go together; but they obviously need to move at the pace of the one the plays less. That doesn’t bother me, but when we do this recruit-a-friend xp level boost, we can move [GENDER PRONOUN] characters up a bit and then I can play my corresponding character solo.

Three, you might try class/gender/race/spec combinations more freely on your temporary recruit-a-friend account than you would on your “main” one. For most people, this isn’t a big plus because they’ve got plenty of spots left on their account or they aren’t hesitant to delete characters. For others…of whom I make no claims for or against…this is a nice benefit.

If you want to do this without adding another credit card into the mix, the process for us has generally been –

1. Wait until Blizzard is having their 50% off sale for the “old content” WoW (currently up through Pandaria as of this writing).
2. Purchase a $15 3-month time card
3. Person 1 will send a recruit-a-friend invite to the e-mail of Person 2’s battle.net I.D.’s account.
4. Then Person 2 will create the recruit-a-friend account under that battle.net I.D.’s. You may have up to 3 WoW accounts under 1 battle.net I.D., I believe.
5. Purchase the $5 WoW
6. Add the 3 month time card
7. Start leveling up together, grant the extra levels gained to a different character (same server, same side only.)
8. Let the recruit-a-friend account expire

By having it linked with your main battle.net I.D. (as opposed to making a new one) you get access to any mounts, heirlooms, pets, or other account wide stuff that you’ve already unlocked. Plus if you get something new, the main account will get it.

This past year happened to line-up with the Midsummer Festival, so we were able to run around honoring/desecrating fires, getting lots of XP, a fair amount of gold, and enough flowers to get the new toys and pets. It did get a bit grindy at times, so we broke it up with some dungeons and quests.

We got 4 total characters to 90 (2 of mine, 2 of theirs), plus by granted levels others to reach 80, 78, and assorted other lower levels. I’m guessing their account added 130 levels across 6 characters in that time. This might not seem like a lot for the 3-4 months of play that we had, but when you don’t have a lot of hours in a week (or a night), it works out pretty well.

There was not a lot of gold generated this time, but I was a bit busy and didn’t really focus on generating gold. It won’t make much but it was still a few thousand that was added to the various coffers.

There are a few drawbacks to note.

Financial Cost – obviously, you are paying for a new game and at least 3 months of time. You get a new mount and some leveling but there is still a fee that must be paid.

Time Cost – if you want to get the most of out of it, you won’t be spending a lot of time on your main account, so they won’t be getting MacGuffin stones or other things you have been working on grinding out.

Grinding – If you want to maximize the benefit of this, you’ll want to power level through as much content as you can. Not really reading quests, not really enjoying content, just doing it. That’s not too bad if you’ve done the same quest a million times and were hoping to skip some boring areas anyway but it can weigh some people down. It can also burn you out a bit if you aren’t careful when you are done. Like any grinding can of course, but still it is not much use in getting a lot of levels and a new mount if you end up needing to take a break from WoW.

Reputation and professions – Your gear says level 90, but your herbalism says level 6. Since you are mainly doing quests and dungeons as quickly as possible, you aren’t typically doing much in the ways of skills. Now, that’s not as huge problem anymore since Blizzard has made it possible to pick high level stuff with low-level skills. But it still means you’ll have to grind up your professions at some point. Same with reputations.

Saying goodbye – if you are a person that gets somewhat attached to your characters and you are the person making the temporary recruit-a-friend account, you might love the new characters you created and try to “rationalize” keeping the second account. And now you are suddenly paying for 2 accounts. To be honest, I think about 3 of my favorite characters I’ve made (by spec or just general design/theme) have been on a recruit-a-friend account. If I could switch them out with some of my characters on my main account…well, I’d have trouble picking who would go to the backbench, but I’d definitely be thinking about it.

There are likely some other drawbacks but those are the main ones that come to mind.

Generally, this works well when you feel like you’ve pretty much done everything in an expansion and are just kind of coasting. It still is doing the same content of course, but with a new drive and a new goal, it can make it palatable.

Plus – flying kitty mount!