Blizzard Giving Lapsed WoW Players An Instant Ticket To Level 80

Have you played World of Warcraft at some point in the past? Have you never managed to take a character all the way to the level cap? Well, if you have a friend who's still in the game, Blizzard is about to give you a very easy way to get close to the current highest possible level.

On the official World of Warcraft website, Blizzard has announced a revised Scroll of Resurrection. This service has traditionally been used to allow current WoW players to invite friends who are no longer playing back into the game. The new Scroll of Resurrection offers some huge bonuses for both parties involved.
The person sending the scroll will receive a new Spectral Gryphon or Spectral Wind Rider mount if the friend accepts and pays for at least a month of subscription. The person receiving the invite gets even greater prizes. In addition to a week of free game time, they will get a free upgrade to the most recent Cataclysm expansion pack, the ability to switch servers or factions on a character for free, and -- here's the awesome part -- one character instantly lifted to level 80.

As far as I can recall, this is the first time that Blizzard has ever introduced a service that allows characters to jump ahead in level aside from the Death Knight hero class in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, which started at level 55. It should allow friends to play together more easily and jump right into the level 80-85 Cataclysm content, which is the best stuff Blizzard has created for World of Warcraft so far.
Some might call this a stopgap solution to keep server populations up while Blizzard works on the next expansion pack, and I don't think they'd be wrong. But like so many things that Blizzard does, it's a pretty brilliant and elegant stopgap solution that is sure to pull in a lot of gamers who had been curious about checking out Cataclysm but didn't want to grind to level 80 to see the best content.
Hopefully we'll have more information on Mists of Pandaria, the upcoming fourth expansion pack for World of Warcraft, soon.