Guild Wars 2

Add a more permanent referral system to GW2…

Give all retail accounts 1 referral (collector/deluxe 2-3 referrals) which basically gives someone a BWE like access, similar to The Lost Shores event.

Referrals expire after 2-3 months then new referrals are granted to accounts.

However, if a referral is upgraded to a retail account, the account granting the invitation is awarded 100 gems and a new referral.

So basically, anyone can invite people to play every 2-3 months but those that get players to upgrade to standard accounts will have their referral replaced and can continue to invite more players.

This would be similar to the referral system given by NCSoft through City of Heroes except they awarded $15 to the initiator (in the form of game time) and 500 paragon points (similar to gems) to the invitee.

With this system, everyone wins. Especially since 100 gems cannot buy anything, but will be a motivating factor to get more invitations to upgrade to standard accounts or spend cash to bring their gem total to 300 to begin buying things in the gem store.