Augest 31st Release and the Lag

Ok...so when the Pre-order pack went on sale in the in-game store....I ran into two issues I'd like to have addressed by Gaile in regards to how these same issues will be handled for the release of GW:EN on the 31st.

1. Delayed release - The pre-order pack wasn't available till like 6pm (Chicago Time) on the 20th...are we going to have to wait like this for GW:EN to hit the online store or will it be there as soon as the content is unlocked for people to access?

2. Lag - I bought 2 copies of the pre-order pack...one for each of my accounts. The first order went through with no problems...put it through as soon as the option was available in the in-game store. The second order however, ran into a couple timeout issues...no doubt due to demand being placed on the servers. I would have continued to submit my order except that I noticed I received an order confirmation (email) for the second pack I was trying to order. So despite the fact that I hadn't gotten a order confirmation screen, only errors, in game....my order did indeed go through.
-Is anything being done to mitigate the impact of lag/high demand?
-Is any kind of preorder period going to be put in where we can order the game so that it will be unlocked when the content is available?
-Will people who purchased the preorder be able to access the content once it's available for a day or so to allow them to place their order for the game itself without having to worry about the initial rush of orders? What I mean is like a period of time where you haven't bought the game yet....but you have bought the preorder...so you have access to the content on the 31st but after that you will need to have the game. Give us a day or so to buy the game and activate the code on our account.

Both a pre-order period and a pre-order content access time (I don't know exactly what to call it) would help with mitigating the initial rush of orders when it is put on sale in the in-game store. Simply putting the option to buy it at midnight on the 31st would only frustrate people as they experience errors due to high demand and no doubt duplicate or more charges to their credit cards for having submited more than one order because they got an error on their first one (even though the order went through). If given the option to order it ahead of time I would definitely do it...and wouldn't be part of that initial rush that will no doubt happen.

Last..mods I know this has to do with GW:EN....I put it here because it'll get seen by more people (to raise awareness of the issues) and hopefully Gaile as well. If you really feel this is not a significant issue and should be moved to the GW:EN forum...do it, but I'm asking you to leave it here.

edit: I have cross posted this to the GW IncGamer Forums....to try to get some more attention for these issues...here is a link to the thread (the thread contains a link here):
http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forum....php?p=5048845

edit 2: yeah I know the thread title is misspelled...I didn't realize it till after a few people had posted...tried to change it but can't change the title displayed in the thread list.

EB games pre-order ftw

Totally agree. I figured they'd have it for sale by now, but it definitely needs to be available at least the week prior to release. The store will be mega-fail at midnight on the 31st and there will be mucho complaining about double, triple, and quadruple orders, along with all sorts of other lag-related shenanigans.

ANET / GAILE W/E @ ANET READ CARFULY.

We are ready to give our money, real world cash that is.

Care to help the issue and let this be easier for all.

No stress for us, quicker incomes for you guys.

Pls, lets make sure this message get trough.

peace and looking forward of an hard core dungeon crawling not trying to buy GWEN.

P.S. Sry my typo in French

This is actually a good idea, to start selling it early. Though I don't know how easy it is to actually make it live on the account when midnight finishes tolling on the release date in your time zone.

I think the reason we got the pre-release so late in the day is because Anet is in California and using California time. Which is about 9 hours behind Europe. Which is they the weekend events always start so late for us.

couldn't have said it better myself...

I'll wait till the 31st to play...that's no problem....but I'd like to be able to lay down the full amount ahead of time so I don't have to worry about getting my order through...

plus it's just burning a hole in my pocket and want to give it to you before I spend it :P

They should allow us to buy it from the in-game store for the week between the preorder event and the release...that would solve a lot of issues.

It was around 6pm Chicago time when they put the preorder in the store...which translates to 4pm Anet time....that's still quite a delay...

I'm glad I'm not the only one concerned about a repeat of the timeout problems that occured when the pre-release hit the gw store. I'll be quite irate if I don't have gwen on the release weekend.

I am seriously concerned about this. It will be a complete disaster on Anet's part if they aren't succesful with the launch of this ...especially since they are "rewarding" purchases made in the store with a MBP...hopefully players won't get screwed trying to get the game...cuz the store can't handle the load...

Yup, I'd like to pay for it as soon as possible as well. I wasn't really that keen on buying through the online store but wanted the bonus missions.

I'm pretty surprised that you can't just pre-order the full game and have it activated on the 31st. (not buy the "pre-order", which I already have)

an official response on when they expect it to be available in the online store would be nice

There has been an official response: 12:01 am pdt on the 31st.

Not wanting to be picky but do you have a source for that. Also, is that the date and time people can begin to play Eye of the North? I was wanting to know when the game would actually go up for sale in their online store. It would seem silly to have it up for sale right on the exact date and time it begins. The amount of people trying to buy it will be rediculous. Putting the game up for sale a week, or even a few days before the game is made live would seem like a much better plan. That was it only needs to be activated on the account.

I started reading this thread thinking, "Oh no, another person crying for Anet to do things there way," but it turns out this is not a bad idea.

Being able to purchase the game ahead of time, even if only a few days, would not only help keep issues with the on-line store to a minimum, but would help me get into the game exactly at 0 hour.

In one of the recent Gaile chats that I was able to attend (not the newest one but a recent one), someone did ask about this and Gaile did say she would look into it. bcuz she knows that ppl do want to get it over with by buying it earlier.

but ye I also did read it somewhere official that it would be available in the ingame store at 12:01 pst Friday...

(I actually did start a thread w/ something similar, which when they used the word "pre-order GWEN" and we only got to buy the prerelease pack. I did(and expect to) want to pay for the prerelease and GWEN at the same time to get any hassles over with. but alas. )

/cmon Anet plz read the OP's suggestion and change your mind.

Being able to buy it from the store early just makes so much sense. It's not like we're going to be able to play it early, but if they put it in the store early, it helps stop the debacle of last time when it came into the store so late. If the same thing happened with the full game, I'd be seriously po'ed, especially as I'd miss out in a large amount of game time, with the pre-release I didn't see it in the in-game store until the next day (in the UK), and if something happened so I couldn't buy it until near the end of the friday, it would be annoying. OK, I could then go and buy it from a store, but I decided to buy from the store for the mission bonus pack.

Putting it into the store early prevents frustrating all those people who have chosen to buy from the in-game store when they may have originally planned to buy from a store before they found out about the mission bonus pack

official source for playing the game
http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forum...&postcount=165
been no info (yet) about when Online store will have it

I agree with everyone else

we should be allowed to buy it earlier to help avoid net congestion

Hmm yes it sounds pretty much fine. I think your idea is good to aleviate the congestion. Just don't let em play it early. ;P

Gaile doesnt read every post on this site and with the volume of new threads here she may not even see this topic. You may want to post this on a few sites or try to get it in the Dev tracker forum.

I agree 100% with the OP, unless NC Soft does a serious upgrade to their servers or lets people start to purchase GW:EN before the 31st their servers crash and burn and they are going to have a horrible mess on their hands.

This idea is what I consider common sense...

...then again. Common sense is rare to come by.

Just a guess, but stores would be very upset if ANet allowed players to purchase the game online BEFORE players were allowed to purchase the game in stores.

For Nightfall I entered the key before midnight and it let me in when they opened the gates. (a little before midnight as most probably know). I'm sure they will post it on the site at least the day before. They probably won't announce that fact though so their retail partners don't get pissed off that they can't sell it until midnight but A/net can sell it the day before.

Are you sure the retail partners wont sell it before Aug 31st? I know with many games retailers will sell it after 6pm the day before the "official" release. With MMOs this makes even more sense so players can access the game when it goes live.

Besides, ANet has stated that the purpose of the Bonus Mission Pack is to encurage On-line sales. Having GW:EN available in the on-line store before midnight would certianly help in that goal.

I agree with those who said the game should be on sale before the actual release date.

There is no saying that retail stores would not sell the games in advance.

I can walk into any video game store and PRE-PAY/PRE-ORDER for a copy of the game I want regardless if the store actually have the game at that time. I did it with lots of other games, as well as with previous GW titles.

As soon as the retail has information on the date they are getting the game, they will sell it. With all that said, getting the actual box on the date the store said they would receive them... is a whole other story...

I purchased Nightfall from the online store at 12:01 am the day it went live with no trouble whatsoever. If they want to make EOTN available before it goes live, thats fine but I don't really see what the fuss is about.

It's no different than stores allowing people to pay them the full price of the preorder (the full price of the game) to reserve a copy of the game. You don't get the game until the 31st in either case (the stores do cheat and release it early sometimes). No the stores will not be mad if people can place a pre-order for the game in the online store...if they are...why aren't they mad at every other store who allows preorders?

More people are buying it online this time around...mainly due to the bonus mission pack offer. It was clear from the experience people had buying the preorder that their servers cannot handle the extra load. That's why there's a fuss.

I'm fully expected the same issues as when I bought the preorder with random errors popping up after considerable delays, but at least this time I know that if an error appears after hitting submit to leave the store and check whether the order worked anyway.

Agreed. That was one of the determining factors for when I chose to give the bonus mission pack the finger and keep my Software Etc. preorder alive. The ingame store was a mess the day the character slots came out. If they release it a week early, that day will have the same affect...At least you'll have a week to get it done.

On another note, arcanemacabre and Pwny Ride (I think) have the coolest avatars ever. Your character pictures were cool, arcane...but I missed the little dude.

hm,
common sense =/= anet.....they rarely do things that we see as common sense.

early release again, using their track record, I doubt it (since yeah, it does make sense for the people to have it in their hot little hands before the game goes live so they can drool over the cd etc). (And they seem to do things opposite of what we see as right. eg; guilty until proven innocent, that's not due process where I live).


good luck with it ya'all....I will be on vacation when it starts, so when I get back everyone please have all the new armors listed nicely on wiki, ok?

I would love to be able to buy the game now and not have to worry about buying it from the ingame store release day.

More convenient for me.

NF was available the day before release for me at EB games, even though i couldnt pick it up that day-.-

WOW - I have been looking at this the other way round....

I had ASSUMED that I'd be able to buy GW:EN the week before release, have the money handed over, and the key added to my account and on the second of release it just becomes active.

They have timed events server side ALL THE TIME.
For example the festival last weekend really did end within 1 minute of when it was scheduled.
Why can't they do the same with GW:EN??

Surely they can't be that naive to think that this is NOT a good idea.
Sell the keys in advance and control access via the server.
There can't be that many ways of entering GW:EN - just disable the quests until the time is right.

I don't care how robust you make your online shop - to run even the smallest risk of stuff going wrong when you have the means to avoid it is just plain silly.

Also it would help build the hype around GW:EN

You could buy Nightfall a few hours before you could play the game. I assume they will do the same thing this time.

Well don't forget that some people well get the game alot earlyer then others because of the pre-order, and like most games they should have it in the story earlyer becuase most stores do that. I know for a fact that when NF came out i was able to get it at Fry's 1 day early and i was ready for when NF hit, so i was all good. So hopefull they do the same and put it into the online story early.

/signed

Seriously, since you'll have to wait till anet "activate" the content in order to play anyways, I see nothing wrong to let the online store offer the key a few days early just to avoid a huge number people going there at the same time and crash anet's servers.

Same for the retail stores too. There is nothing wrong to let the retail store to have the box early, since you'll have to wait until anet "activate" the contents in order to play anyways.

I'm still smarting from the NF CE pre-orderers who got shut out of the game when it went live for about a week until the keys could catch up.

If that happens again.....shame on me

TBH, I wish Gaile would post on this thread to assure us that many of us who have preordered from the store will not miss out the SECOND it comes out. Well... I can wait a minute or two, BUT NOT THREE. Lol .

Everyone keeps bringing up NF..yeah the game was available in the online store when it was released....but was there a reason for people to chose the online store over their local EB or Best Buy? No other than convenience (say if you hadn't preordered yet). I bought both of my copies at my local GameStop. Now we have the Bonus Mission Pack...no doubt anyone who doesn't really care at all about getting a CD and manual will buy it in the online store because of the mission pack. Yeah hopefully they'll do the thing that makes the most sense and put it in the online store early....but we have no word on whether or not that will happen...and with the lag that happened when the preorder hit the store...it is a valid concern and should be addressed...which is why I created this thread.

I'm starting to think I need to post this on multiple boards though since it hasn't garnered the interest from anet that it should have despite the interest from the community.

For Nightfall I logged into the store at exactly midnight and bought it.
I didn't have any problems with the store or getting into the game that night.
I'm thinking the store problem from the pre-order pack was caused by something else.

I've pre-ordered games in the past from Play.com and got them before release day, including Nightfall.

Anyway, seeing as I didn't say it last time.

/signed.

It really is quite a sensible suggestion, the bonus missions are going to attract a lot of people who wouldn't always buy through the online store. Myself included.

I'm actually hoping they don't add it to the store until the split second it's released. Constant store crash and people being charged 27 times for their purchases FTW!!!!



Kidding >.>

Please let us buy it early, mmmmkay? /beg

A couple minutes after the patch hit that enabled the purchase of the preorder pack I had placed my first order with no problems at all....about 15 minutes after that I tried ordering for my second account and I got timeout errors when trying to process the transaction. If you'd like to suggest something else happened that everyone here experienced please feel free...but the most logical explanation was the lag due to demand.