Blizzard recently announced an overhauled "Scroll of Resurrection" campaign with tons of awesome bonuses for both giver and receiver. In today's WoW Factor, we take a look at the program and offer up a few thoughts. Check it out!

Occasionally something rare and exquisite happens.  What I speak of is my astounding ability to let my own stupidity get ahead of me just so it can ruin my day, and today is one of those days folks.  I was perusing the World of Warcraft news world like any other day and I happened to stumble upon this.  It would seem that Blizzard, in one of their intermittent strokes of genius, decided to buff the Scroll of Resurrection beyond the point of helpfulness all the way to absurdity in a ploy to gain some subscriptions.

Read more of Joseph Sanicky's The WoW Factor: The Referral Scroll of Ding!

imo, Blizz will make Cataclysm default package (just as Vanilla and Burning Crusade are now). so, one could look at this offer as early opportunity for past players to jump back, or money grab.

your pick.

as for leveling mores, well... it's not like there something different to do at end game than during leveling.

To me it sounds like leveling have become boring and instead of fixing it they offer a levelup to old players comming back.

they are treating the symptom, not the problem.

I support this message!

I'm actually surprised you can't buy an 80 for $50 in the store. I'm sure it's in the pipe.

isnt the level cap 85? lol those 5 levels turn me away from this offer.

The only people I know that are using this item are vets with multiple accounts who need maybe one or two 85's to complete the set:p It costs £15 to move the 80 onto your main account after it's created which makes it a no brainer if you dont want to level another character all the way.

I find it pretty sad that cataclysm revamped all the 1-60 content and now they release this and you skip it all, it just goes to show that this is yet again either a money grab and/or a way to inflate the dwindling subscription numbers by Blizzard/Activision.

I used a scroll - bringing my sister in law back to WoW because she really wants to play again, so she get's free game time, I get a new mount, and my brother get's to pick a random class of his choice to ding to 80.

Between our two accounts we have 6 85's so we really don't care about the leveling process much anymore - been there done that since 2004.

(puts on my flame retardent helmet)

I went back because of this deal.  Something someone said about WoW being the biggest for a reason and no one else able to hold a candle to it I believe started it.

I got my scroll, read through the details, and logged in.

People from my guild were apparently on the same wavelength as some of them were logging in too.. Most had left ToR for greener pastures.

I check in on my old toons in various states of disarray... and talk to the guild.  What kimd of 80 would they need.  Dwarf Mage for an achievement.  Cool, I'd never run a mage as I got disheartened 25-30 in the past by their squishiness.

Created the level 1, popped the pill on Battle.net and BLAMMO level 80 was born.  I was a green geared (iLVL 230ish), everything but flight mastery, frostweave bags on the toon, equipped mage.  Cool right?

Yea except so much had changed since I played last, I actually spent almost a full day reading up.  Reforging and mastery were of special concern.  Once it drops you as an 80 in Stormwind, you're on your own.  One quest that sents you to the boats...

That being said, it's day 3.  I'm level 82 and eyeballing pre-raid gear.  This was just enough to possibly get a couple of months out of me.  We'll see.

they need to be carefull of using the word scroll otherwise Betheda might take them to court over it..

Originally posted by Caldrin

they need to be carefull of using the word scroll otherwise Betheda might take them to court over it..

 

lol so true!

The Referral Scroll of Ding?

More like... The Referral Scroll of $$$ Cha-ching! $$$ Cha-ching! $$$

You can speak evil of blizzard all day but they have a way to get us wow addicted addicts back. scroll of ding very funny but effective.

It means they are loosing subs and need to get people back. this is a good thing in my opinion. you need to lose sometimes to see what made you a winner before those times came.

This Sor is just a load of BS. If you had used a trial while you account is frozen, you are marked as acttve, thus your not eligible to use SoR.

Half of Europe is on the black list and not eligible to use SoR. Blizzard claim that these countries legislation does not permit them to offer this promotion in every european country, but they fail to pont out the exact law that will not allow them to do so.

Anyway, since WotLK Blizzard is following a strange path. They retexture Azeroth and sell it as an expansion. SoR is not usable in half of Europe. The whole content is dumbed down for 8 yo kids. Pandas. How come they still have 10M customers is beyond my understanding.

The reason why you didn't get a level 80 is simple.

They already have you.

Why would they give you something for free when you're already giving them money?

With the scroll, they can "buy" other past players back. If they don't stay, Blizzard doesn't lose anything. If they gave YOU a level 80, you might get bored quicker and leave.

As a business decision? It's spectacular. It lowers the re-entry barrier by a LOT. People who are already playing may be upset, but they aren't going to quit over it. But a lot of the ex-players will come back over it because of the free level 80 character they get.

As a gameplay decision? It's mixed. It's great for some people who are familiar with the game and have a great understanding of the mechanincs and of multiple classes, as leveling was just a tedious process that you were forced to take part in if you wanted to get to the actual meat of the game (max level PvP, LFD/LFR, daily quests ect, all require you to be max level). That's great.

But the downside is you will probably get a number of players who don't have this extensive knowledge of the game because they quit when they were level 20 or 30 and may not have played since BC or LK. They're coming into a game that has changed DRASTICALLY and are slingshotted to 80 without even having the leveling process to eas them into things (and to be fair the leveling process in WoW doesn't teach you shit. It's horrible as a learning tool, especially given how prolonged it is. That's why you see so many clueless 85's). So while they might plow through the questing ect., they're learning about dungeons and grouping (if they even find out HOW to do either) in situations that are FAR less forgiving than if they had normally leveld up.

Still don't know how I feel about this, I'm kinda torn on whether I like it and think it's a good idea or hate it with a passion. It's just that it conflicts with so many base design goals and systems -_-

I feel like a pusher giving free heroin out to my friends.

Any leveling game is essentially a series of sequels with smooth overlap between the current game and past games.  Cataclysm 80-85 is really "World of Warcraft 4".  For a typical game, you don't make people would want to play "$Franchise IV" first prove they have completed $Frachise I-III every time they create a character.  Yet in an MMO, this is the norm.

So the dilema the leveling-game industry faces as time passes, is how to make those old games relevent without being a barrier to entry to the "current" game.

[mod edit]

If you have no life and powergrind your way through it, sure.  If you're an actual functional human being, want to actually have fun when you log in and have only a couple of hours a day to clear your thoughts of the rest of your life, remember how to play the game and remember what you were doing, then no.

If you are completing a game designed to go two years between expansions in two days, it's possible, just possible, that you aren't actually the typical player.

My brother and I will probably use this...

What's really amazing about this offer is that you only need to sub for 30 days to get all the goodies. O.o