Augest 31st Release and the Lag

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.