MERGED: Factions Collector's Edition Comments and Questions

the last word was that it was out of their hands and they would get back when they had more to say than we still dont know.

Huh. Seems NewEgg hasn't shipped mine, either. Ah, well. Are the keys that come with the CE to unlock the goodies a completely seperate key from the one to play? Like.. If I bought a key online, then my CE showed up, could I take the item/dance key and apply it to the key I bought online, then just use that access key as a backup or gift for a friend?

<edit>Or is the item/dance key linked to/the same as the access key? Anyone who had the original's CE know?</edit>

In preparations for factions, I used my last characters lot on one of my accounts (I have two) to create a necro, to try and cap every skill (or at least the vast majority of them) before the pre-launch. I started this character last friday. Keep in mind, I have a daytime job, as well as work that needs to be done during the weekend. I've played basically 27 hours and currently sit at ember light camp. While it's no record time, it also accounts for:

Doing every quest available on the way up to unlock a skill. If there was a quest available to unlock a skill, I did it, including such fun ones as "eye for profit".
I used henchies when needed or joined PUGs, but was run to the following:

Lion's Arch from Borliss Pass (paid 800g).
Beacon's Perch to Droknars (for armor) (3K)
Through Sanctum Cay mission because no one ever wants to do it any more. (1K)
To all desert locations (tips, I gave 2K because I'm a nice guy)
Elona Reach mission (1K)

I actually ascended while at level 16.

Thus, while I was run places, I didn't run them simply to get to ROF at level 3, I simply skipped areas to speed up the process a bit and bypass some of the more tedious missions. If skill points become a problem, I can always go back and complete Frost Gate, or some of the other earlier missions fairly easily.

In the 27 hours, I have most of the skills for necro unlocked, including 5 elites.

I consider this the "conservative" character rush method. I'm not bypassing entire continents, just sections/missions I don't like or are too tedious. It's also a non-rich (but has money) way to not paying huge costs (the so-called world tour runs) but being relatively rushed through everything.

I tried to solo with henches THK, but the game glitched, and the end bosses never attacked, all of my minions eventually died while I fruitlessly waited, and when I went out to find the stupid bosses (sitting out in the middle of nowhere) my henches got creamed because I had no corpses to exploit, or minions to fight with. Second time, I joined a PUG and we breezed through it in record time. It might have had something to do with my massive minion army I had, but of course, no one really thought of that after the mission was complete and they were all telling each other how much they rocked. No love for the MM that made the whole mission easy, I guess.

So, yeah, it's extremely easy to get through the game fairly quickly if you have about 10K to spend and don't mind doing a lot of it yourself with henches, PUGs, solo running place to place, or paying someone to run you.

And find bargains. Don't get desparate and pay more than the run is worth. Last resort - actually try and do the mission the old fashioned way.

Again, I wouldn't be surprised if Anet extends the Head Start to 10 days. That said:

There's a huge difference between a 10 day trial for a pay-to-play monthly game, and a game like Guild Wars. With pay-to-play, the idea is to attract new players and get them to sign up. The longer people play, the more likely they are to get addicted, and start paying monthly.

Guild Wars is in a unique spot: For people who already own Prophecy, they can keep playing Guild Wars forever. They don't need to buy Factions. For some people, 10 days in Factions will be enough time to get their Elites and cap their skills and be done with it.

Anet has to balance those who would "mis-use" a 10 day trial, with the legitimate CE buyers who are getting shafted (I never said they weren't). But it's not the end of the world...

(I do find it funny that people who claim 10 days is not a big deal, want 10 "free" days of gaming!)

I for one have decided to go with the Regular Edition because of this. I'm sure I won't be alone...

Yup. ANet screwed the pooch on this one. I was going to buy the CE, even did a pre-order for it, but because it's delayed I'm going to simply buy the standard edition and be done with it. It's not like the CE really has anything compelling in it to justify it's cost and (now) wait time.

well from what the GW site sez gw:f shiped today

Anyone got any news from www.gameseek.co.uk ??

Ashleigh.

But, but, Backup Dancers!

I just called the EBGames I preordered with, and i was told that since the collectors edition would be delayed 1 week, i could call their customer service line for a key that would allow me to play until I got the CE

I haven't had a chance to get home and get my receipt (I'm at work currently) so I haven't been able to confirm this. I asked if it was the preorder code and he said that it was not the same.

If anyone else has a chance to call their customer service line (1-800-883-8895) please post the results here.

He did say that I would need the preorder number or receipt.

i hope this is a solution to the situation of not having the CE in our hands at release.

if so, ANET did really good here. i still might get the collector edtion if this is true

exactly.

i wanted the CE and missing a week (or a month) of gameplay in Cantha is meaningless to me.

it is a game and i have other things i can do while they iron out the bugs.

i still have the 48 hours to play and that is fine with me.

Since i'm at Bestbuy they have it first come first serve and ce delayed= i wont know when it comes in, so if anyone else is in the same position dont wait if you dont mind not getting the extras and just wanna play. But i'm glad for the rest of you who might get a solution.

I CALLED AND THE REP SAID THE TALKS WITH NCSOFT NOTE NCSOFT NOT ANET FELL THROUGH AND THIS WILL NOT OCCURE AT LEAST AT THIS TIME.

thanks for checking up on it, i will confirm when i get home (not too much longer)

Dang. I did have a friend who had trouble with the pre-order. EBGames failed to deliver the pre-order kit early enough to use on Wednesday night. So when he called up, the guy opened a pre-order kit, read the key to my friend, and then put that pre-order kit in the mail to my friend.

I'd like to hope they could do something like that, but apparently they don't have the CE's in hand (or they could just mail them out!)

It's not.

Update

Futureshop.ca and Bestbuy.ca has the GW:F CE now available for purchase. price: $89.99CDN. (just like it was w/ Prophecies @FS 1st time). (what timing .Oy...).

Contingency plan
In finding this out. I will be waiting for my CE from EBgames instore on the 28th. If delayed Friday. Then Friday/Saturday, I will surely be visiting the FS/BB instores near me. If it so happens the CE is there. Adios EBgames!(I lose $5.). xD.

/g'day.

My friend tried this earlier today and they were told they were out of keys and wouldn't be able to give them one.

yeah, i hate to confirm that this doesn't seem like a solution, but that's the case.

I don't know how legitimate the claims are about NCSoft refusing to give keys out for collector's edition pre-orders, but it does seem like it would be a good solution.

oh well, I can wait a week for my CE.

This has been handled horribly. At least last year they had a valid reason for the delays in shipping, and it didn't develop into a bad problem. This year they have no other reason than they completely borked the whole thing.

The problem isn't just the CEs (luckily I had preorderd both a CE and a standard, so I have the headstart key and the regular retail which should be here friday)

But others only preorderd the CE, so if the headstart key isn't extended (which we have heard yes and no from various sources) some people won't be able to play at all until they get their retail version either through store pickup or in the mail.

Well, this won't be affecting me anymore. I planned on getting the CE but with the money problems I see in the future, I can't -.-

Question about the shirt: Do I have to ask the cashier for one or would they know to give me one? Eventually I'll ask if they have any left but I just want to make sure.

Hey, good to see. Was at FS this morning so asked about it. The guy was going to look into it and give me a call. I wonder how they are affected by the delay? You'd think, that by adding it to their website today, they'd have an idea of when they will actually have it.

I'll give EB a call tomorrow and if there's a delay on my preorder from them, I'll be at FS Friday morning to hopefully get one there.

/good to know.

The weird thing is with all the delay talk, you would think they would put a May est on it...unless FS (as it is apparent) is out of the loop of things concerning all GW info this year.

/If you have some new info later on. plz enlighten us if you would about it.
/thx in advance..

Indeed.

But you know, I have a feeling that all the CE's will be sold no matter what; even if all of us decided to cancel them for the standard edition. I hear reports from that other BB thread, and called the BB store, there will only be a handful of CE's on hand at each store (3-5). Also, I assume all online retailers have sold-out on all preorders for the CE.

It's not really a matter of the CE's being sold or not, I'm pretty sure ANET/NCSoft knows they will get "rid" of them (get them off the shelves), but it's more of a blow to the consumers of the game and the general outlook of this release. When we remember CE GWF, we will all remember the delay, and the strife it caused, of having to "wait" even longer to play. For those that absolutely MUST start playing the game from the get-go (I assume the PvPers), this is a difficult choice. Shell out more money for the standard, or cancel/trade the CE pre-order for the standard.

Terrible mark on ANET/NCsoft, regardless of whose mistake it was. It will be associated to the said parties no matter what.

They should extend the Head Start by 10 days because the people who want it are paying $20 USD extra or more per gamebox only to be told "well, you can't play because we borked the distribution," it isn't just marketing the game to new players, it is showing the people buying the game that Arena Net/NCSoft cares about its customer base.

Then the game is crap and no one should buy it, and if they can do it in 10 days, why don't they buy it so they can take part in the PvP that Arena Net espouses as so great?

thanks and what time does best buy open i looked on the site and could not find it or did not look for it right.

Well, that's short sided. Just because a few people could be satisfied with playing Factions for 10 days, no one should buy it?

It's not just pvp'ers, actually I'd think it's less. There is already a ton of content that will be available for the pvp player with or without factions - new armors, new weapons, new guild halls, new arena maps, new HA maps (just guessing there since we haven't actually seen any). Everyone gets all of this regardless, if all you want is pvp. Of course, you can't play the new characters but from what I've seen, there isn't all that much to miss. I'm one of the folks that just isn't impressed with either new profession, I think anet could've done a bit better job in coming up with new classes than a wimpier warrior and a weaker ranger. Just my opinion, of course.

The delay actually will significantly impact sales, but more importantly will cheese off a lot of folks. As I said, the CE wasn't all that great to begin with.

I know they will be at least 2 sales less from me. I have three copies of chapter 1 myself, one regular, one collectors, and one regular for my daughter (that she bought herself). She played for three days and moved on to DDR. My first account was from the standard copy of chapter one, and it contains my rank, and my favorite character. I bought the collectors edition about a month later (I found it on a store shelf somewhere) because I was tired of the four character slot limit, and didn't want to delete my existing characters just to make more. As factions drew closer, I started to seriously rethink how this was gonna work. If ANet is serious about releasing a new chapter every six months, I certainly wasn't going to go buy two copies of everything twice a year, that's stupid. So, I started consolidating my stuff, and putting everything back into the first account and dropping the collector's edition completely. It's a shame too, it has three completed characters (mesmer, elementalist and necro) with all skills unlocked for those three professions, as well as 15K armor for all three, superior vigor runes, green items, etc.

Thank god for the salvage kit.

I'm sure there are plenty of folks out there that are in the same or similar boat. I'm certain that sales of factions won't be nearly as big as chapter 1. May be biased, but just a hunch.

I'd like to know roughly how many people preordered the collector's ed. of factions. I just got a sad sad call that the collector's ed. is "indefinitly suspended" due to manufacturing something or another. I get to play thrusday...but not friday...unless I want to pick up a copy of the regular ed. I really don't want to shell out another $50 for another copy when I already pre-ordered one but I think I'm going to hang on to the pre-order.

What do you guys think?

Asrial, could you tell me why not try to get $10 preorder payment off the regular version? Does that mean the sales receipt will only show $39.99 for the game instead of $49.99, so you can't get full refund if you return? Based on what I heard from my local Best Buy, it seems like they will do a return of the preorder sale, then sell the real game at full price. Do you think Best Buy store will treat the preorder like this, or just the customer service at my local store misunderstood the preorder process? Thank you!

well my gamestop and EB retailer said that they were having manufacturing problems with the CE, but it should be in next week, as NC said somewhere to them.

i'll get the standard, then buy the CE when it comes out. waste of money, but call it a thank you gift to ANet for the great game :-)

i have 2 accounts and i preordered both the collectors and the reg. while im still pissed about this delay, it wont affect me in a huge way as i can still play on 1 of my accounts. i do hope we get free shipping or something because of this...

sry to say,

but I find it quite irritating that ppl are complaining because when they buy CE they can't play factions for lets say 3 days...

Is it rly that big of a difference you can't play 1 weekend?

I can understand that you want to start playing it from the moment its released, but complaining like this is just imo pathetic.

Yea I have 2 accounts now as well but I only preordered one copy. I think when I get money I'll have to go pick up the reg ed. Both the gamestop and eb games near me (fl) said it could be any set ammount of time...a week, 2, a month...they dont know and ANet has nothing on their site about it (at least from what brief time I looked over their site). I hope it's no more than a week. I can live a week w/o factions but that stupid preview event got me really interested. *pissed but contempt*

In my local Best Buy store, there is a note on the shelf stating that the T-shirt will be put together along side the Factions game boxes on Friday.

Target was ripping people off last year.

Then your point is again moot. If only a few people are satisfied with that, what does it matter? The majority are either buying it or interested in buying it.

Just to be clear, I wrote to support, and they quite definitely said that Head Start will only last for 48 hours. The ten day grace period appears to only apply to character slots themselves, so your characters aren't deleted right after the end of the Head Start.

Yeah, I spoke with EB games in my town and they told me to call the 800 CS number. I spoke with a dude named Adam and he says that they were -supposed- to have keys for those that ordered the CE, but NC Soft came back and said they weren't going to give keys to those people that ordered the CE. Originally the ETA for the CE to arrive was 5/2, but now NC Soft is giving an unknown ETA....

I just want to know how I'm supposed to play factions with the rest of the players when I won't have a game to play with....