"Immersive" Referral Program

The immersion bit is that recruit has to speak to Captain Kinsey and say "<recruiting avatar's name> says hi"

What does the the recruit get?
Kinsey would welcome the recruit and give them a starter pack with helpful items like the following:
- Selectable low-end full armor set bag (cloth, leather, chain, plate)
- Selectable low-end weapon bag (wand, staff, sword, axe, etc)
- An extra set of normal tools (pickaxe, etc)
- 5x of each of the scrolls
- 5-10 different foods

What does the recruiter's get?
At the time the recruit talks to Kinsey, a mail is sent to the recruiter to let them know

Assuming the recruit played for at least 10 hours and completed one of the main quest lines within the first 30 days:

- Position on the in game leader board
- If the recruiter is part of the rewards program, they will get an extra potion reward or 10 extra COTOs
- After recruiting 25 players, they get a new title
- A new title for every XX additional recruits
- Entry into a monthly on-stream recruiter's only drawing for a big prize

Of course, there should be limitations in place so existing accounts do not count.

I think the above benefits are fairly balanced and provide enough incentive for both parties to without doing anything even close P2W or game breaking.


Besides being "immersive", this would require no web work from the devs. No "recruiter code" management. No recruiter signups. No link tracking, etc.

 

I love the idea mind you, but what stops someone from farming new accounts and refer themselves? We already know RMTers are creating accounts, bringing them to a training zone to train them to lvl 100 and sell them, why would they now refer themselves first and make even more?

I would love this feature though, I just know some people will make the Devs regret it if it is not correctly implemented...

 

A few reasons.
1) one main quest creation will be far more difficult to bot than setting a new avatar behind a rock in UT while it collects XP
2) there isn't enough RMT value in the rewards to the recruit/recruiter to make it profitable
3) the public leaderboard would make it obvious if someone is possibly gaming the system

 

Are you aware that newbies already start with plenty of free armor, as well as free bows, swords, and staffs? And it was only recently that they stopped handing out free chain. In fact, as a newbie I told them to stop handing out free chain. It was a horrible disappointment to me as a new player to be just handed something that I wanted to work up to, as if my dream armor was worthless trash. Mind you, the freebie stuff wasn't as advanced as it seemed to me at that point, but as long as even our basic armor appears to a newbie eye to have magical pluses attached to it.... Also, been playing since spring and not one piece of my newbie gear has worn out yet.

I do like the idea of giving people choice in their starting gear, but that should be for everyone, not just referrals.

Well, so far only my freebie gathering tools have started to wear out, certainly none of the others. And not all of the gathering tools.

Newbies need help to learn the world's geography, not help teleporting around getting themselves more confused about geography in the process.

I appreciate the idea of a referral program, but I'm not a fan of anything that's going to load newbies down with even more stuff that they don't have bank slots for. Especially coming from Kinsey, who already has so much stuff to give newbies in response to different keywords that she forgets something half the time.

Now, extra bank slots? That's a referral bonus I can see newbies appreciating.

 

New players get free sets of starter armour now? Wow, one of the most fun bits for me when I started was scrounging bits of gear and getting excited when something dropped and then working out how to make my own basic armour set from gathering and crafting. That was a blast. Shame they miss this now.