Recruit a Friend



The Refer a Friend Programme is a feature introduced on 18 August 2011. Players who participate in the programme can invite a friend to join RuneScape, rewarding both the invitee and the friend with experience multipliers.

How it works
A player who has signed up for the programme can invite up to 50 friends through mail and an unlimited number of people through a referral link. A player will only be tagged as an "invited friend" when he/she creates a new account after using a referral link.

The invited player will receive a starter pack along with a bonus that allows him/her to get a double experience modifier for the first week of play time (limited to level 30 in each skill). If this player subscribes to RuneScape within two weeks of being invited, the referring player will gain a 10% experience bonus for a week. A maximum of five boosts can be obtained in a year. Bonuses do not stack with the Bonus XP Weekend and can be activated any time.

Refer-a-friend does not stack with Wisdom aura, neither does RAF stack with outfits (lumberjack etc.). RAF does stack with Stealing creation tools, but does not affect reward XP (minigame, quests, etc.).

Starter pack
The starter pack consists of a mystery cracker that can be pulled with any player, giving the new player:
 * A hat - Either a Leather cowl, Wizard hat (blue) or Wizard hat (black)
 * Clothing - Either a Leather body, Cape (random colour), or a Priest gown (top)
 * A weapon - Either a Bronze sword, Bronze 2h sword, Bronze scimitar, Bronze longsword, Bronze warhammer, Bronze battleaxe, or Bronze halberd.
 * 500 coins
 * Cake

Controversy
The announcement was met with overwhelming negative reception on the forums as players accused Jagex of real-world trading, as players can gain the bonus experience by buying membership for an alternate account rather than a friend. Complaints were similar to that of the Flagstaff of Festivities and the Members Loyalty Programme. Another much-used argument is that the programme will be massively abused by bot accounts.

The controversy that Jagex is breaking its own "real world trading" rule spread to a riot on a members, World 66 and also free-to-play, World 73. As is the norm in past riots players spammed and chanted sayings such as, "We pay we say", "Ban the bots!" or "Welcome to BotScape" and generally did anything they could to add to the chaos. A popular way to add to the chaos was by setting up cannons and summoning large familiars such as titans, thus creating large amounts of lag on slower computers. Many players also planted flowers and put on overhead prayers such as Smite and Wrath to show their anger. There has also been massive spamming on the forums with over 50 pages of threads being locked, many players referring to a past quote by Mark Gerhard in their arguments against the programme. There are 1542 pages in the official thread, almost all of the posts are rants.

The experience boost is not applied when opening ancient effigies or a dragonkin lamp. The experience boost DOES NOT work with the penance horn either.

Trivia

 * Upon pulling the Mystery Cracker, the player has a chance of receiving a Bronze halberd, which appears as "Members object" to the player. It is unknown if this is a glitch or not.