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Vivendi Jilts WoW CE Pre-order Customers
Draconix writes "Having pre-ordered the World of Warcraft Collector's Edition over a month in advance, I eagerly checked my email on November 22nd, expecting confirmation of shipment. Instead, I received a notice from Inside Mac Games, explaining that their order for the WoW Collector's Edition would not be filled. It seems, at the last minute, Vivendi Universal decided to ship a limited number of copies, and only to major players, such as Amazon.com. Doubtless, IMG is one of many stores who have had to inform their unsuspecting customers of this development. Of course, it is now too late to obtain it from one of the distributors that did receive it, so thousands of expectant gamers will come up empty-handed--denied what many had ordered months in advance. With Vivendi Universal already at odds with one of their developers, is more trouble on the way?"
That individual stores are getting very, very limited quantities of these delivered. Given the numbers I have been hearing from folks who picked theirs up yesterday, many retailers are getting 2-3 copies of the CE per store, irrelevant of their pre-orders, or the size of the store. So it seems likely that we won't be seeing them on the shelves and that some pre-orders won't be filled today. I pre-ordered the standard version, and according to my store, they have standard versions exceeding their pre-orders. So no problem there, hopefully.
Even at Amazon, the CE is out. It seems Vivendi wanted to see their product on eBay, and nothing more. Not only is this bad business, it sounds like a scam, if you ask me.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Blizzard didn't select the publisher ... Vivendi owns Blizzard. They may have made the choice to sell to them at one point, but they were locked into them from that point on.
Also, I wonder if these collector editions of these games are created solely by the publisher to begin with. In which case, it'd be doubtful if Blizzard would have any say one way or the other.
You think you've got it bad?! The clowns at Vivendi only distributed 200 - for our entire COUNTRY.
EB Games got 40 units for its complete shipment nationwide. I ordered a month in advance, two copies, from a major online retailer here - who received only 60 copies, and couldn't fulfil either of those orders.
I posted about this [worldofwarcraft.com] on their forums, but got no reply, when I found out before launch day.
It really blows! I really wanted the art book. And what with the region locking of accounts, it looks like I can't buy one from eBay either (there are a few copies there, going for nutso money).
I know exactly one person (personally) in my country who's managed to get their order filled. Vivendi have told retailers here that they won't be re-releasing this pack either, or any of the product within it seperately.
For my money: whilst I'm not into piracy per-say, I really hope someone scans and copies the products and rips 'em out to a torrent or ed2k source. I mean, ffs, 200 for an entire country is a joke.