Blizzard offering free Cataclysm upgrades to woo players back to World of Warcraft

Brian Ambrozy 7 Mar, 2012 at 5:01pm ET Article published in Gaming

The Spectral Wind Rider

Blizzard today announced that they are sweetening the pot for people who used to play World of Warcraft and are a hairs’ breadth from coming back to Azeroth.

The new Scroll of Resurrection allows existing players to invite old friends back. The returning player gets some pretty significant benefits:

A single character immediately boosted all the way to level 80
A FREE upgrade to Cataclysm—someone who hasn’t played since the original release would receive all of the game’s content for free, including the Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm expansions
An optional FREE character move and faction change—to the inviter’s realm and faction, making it easy to join old friends in the adventure
7 FREE days of game time—available immediately upon accepting

After 30 days of play time, existing players who use the Scroll to bring a friend back get a free mount: Spectral Gryphon for Alliance or Spectral Wind Rider for Horde.

Existing players can cast the Scroll of Resurrection at this page.

Comments

7 Mar 2012 ~ 5:05pm Ryder Hmmm.. bring my mage from 36 straight to 80?
7 Mar 2012 ~ 5:21pm MAGIC A game full of end game characters who dont know how to play their class? sounds more frustrating than fun to me.
7 Mar 2012 ~ 5:28pm SpencerForHire
A game full of end game characters who dont know how to play their class? sounds more frustrating than fun to me.
7 Mar 2012 ~ 5:32pm fatcat They fear Guild Wars 2
7 Mar 2012 ~ 5:43pm mertesn
They fear ~~Guild Wars 2~~ everything that's eating into their profits
fixed
7 Mar 2012 ~ 7:32pm Koreish With all the free MMO's out there that are basically the same thing I can't imagine why Blizzard would be doing this.
7 Mar 2012 ~ 7:57pm Chooch I still would not go back...
7 Mar 2012 ~ 10:22pm Bandrik I played back before the first expansion. I got to level 40, realized I was bored, and quit.

If I were to jump back in at level 80, I would become disinterested that much faster.

Blizzard tries BRIBE!!! It's not very effective...
7 Mar 2012 ~ 10:36pm NullenVoyd This along with the canning of employees I've heard about, and the cancellation of the convention, doesn't send a good message.

On it's own, very nice incentives, but like mentioned, the game already suffered greatly by people who didn't know their class because they don't need to to hit max level.

I'll likely still play a bit with the wife when the pandas come out, but otherwise it just doesn't hold the interest for me it used to, incentives or not.
8 Mar 2012 ~ 12:30am Tim I want my epic Phoenix mount, Ashes of Al'ar. And if Blizzard has to give away Cataclysm upgrades, then WoW must be on the way out.
8 Mar 2012 ~ 9:44am Chooch They have been working on a secret new MMO for about a good 2-3 years now. WoW has been on their way out since Lich King
8 Mar 2012 ~ 5:01pm SpencerForHire That was painfully obvious when they moved half their dev staff to their new project prior to cataclysm.
9 Mar 2012 ~ 8:35pm TheAlertHusky Lol they lost their players to LoL :b I'm not sure that they're going to get em back.
10 Mar 2012 ~ 8:45am Harudath WOTLK was the last expansion in the coffin for me. Dumbed it down too much and the game lost its charm. No challenge + gormless credit card wielding twelve year olds was too much. RIP WoW.