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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?"
There must be an ongoing wager as to who can get the most bad PR for Vivendi. "Hmm... I see your HL2/Steam and raise you a WoW ripoff."
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
This could well be IMG starting to sell pre-order versions without having any gurantee of delivery and now trying to paint Vivendi as the bad guy for their cock up.
In this world of buy-anything from anywhere, any advantage such as semi-exclusivity on the sale is a bonus.
I am wondering how much Amazon paid for this... or if the publisher just screwed up?
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
I guess I'll find out if the local EB I purchased it from got enough/any copies.
Amazon lists it as:
"Availability: This item is not stocked or has been discontinued."
I wanted to give Vivendi more of my money but they decided to leave it on the table.
I'll downgrade to standard edition instead of waiting a month for them to get their act together.
-==-
What does Blizzard's developing of a MMO (the best I've played so far, BTW) have to do with Vivendi's screwing of their own customers? Blizzard didn't make the decision to limit the number of CEs, Vivendi did.
;)
It would be nice to find some way of creating a backlash against Vivendi without hurting Blizzard. Or without depriving myself of WoW.
If WoW isn't as polished at release as an MMO can get, then what is the ruler we are going to judge these things by?
No game is perfect, or pleases everyone. Frankly, having played about a dozen MMOs, WoW comes off as the most ready for release candidate for the merket that I have seen thus far. I have Beta tested several MMOs in the past year, and the only happier Beta community I have seen was the ATITD2 community(which is, frankly, an niche market).
Regarding WoW, both ingame and out of game, I have seen very little chatter disparaging the game, with the exception of some very legitimate criticism regarding the state of PvP at launch. In defense of WoW's PvP model, people on the Standard Ruleset servers seemed happy as clams, and were having a blast raiding each other.
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.
Severely lacking content? Horrible balance issues? What the hell are you talking about? World of Warcraft has shitloads of content and it's definitely isn't unbalanced. There might be some very small balance issues issues here and there, but please name me an MMORPG which launched without any. In my opinion, WoW in beta was far more balanced than most MMORPGs were months (or even years) after launch.
500,000 people signed up for the Open Beta. EverQuest, as far as I know, never had more than 450,000 subscribers. It's not a direct comparison, but I won't be surprised if World of Warcraft will beat EQ's number of subscribers by the end of the week.
MMORPGs are larger and more complex than single-player games, no argument there, but Blizzard had more than enough past experience to create an MMORPG - more than any other MMORPG developer did when they started! They already knew how to balance gameplay issues and create fun RPG systems (Diablo 1/2, Warcraft III) and they knew about networking technology (Battle.net). Diablo and Warcraft might be "small-scale" multiplayer games, but the servers running them are actually all but small-scale! Dude, Blizzard had much more relevant experience than Verant did when they created EverQuest.
Dude, you must be the only person in the world that doesn't think World of Warcraft is not ready. Of all the 3rd gen mmorpgs out there, majority concensus is that WoW is the MOST ready game, and could have been released months ago as is. Severely lacking in content? Now we know you are just trolling. There's so much content in the game that people were afraid it would be taking AWAY from the multiplayer aspect. And I've seen no issues with imbalance, or pvp.
Thing is, while Blizzard have a fairly good (but not perfect) record of delivering decent singleplayer and small-scale multiplayer games, releasing a MMORPG is an undertaking on a totally different order of magnitude.
For every single game they launched that uses battlenet, they've always run into launch problems. The first couple of days of the Diablo 2 launch was a total disaster, as was war3. But give them a couple of days, and things smooth out. Diablo 2 and War3 are still incredibly popular today, and nobody remembers what craziness was going on at the beginning of the launch.
MMORPGs are vast games, in terms of content, complexity and number of players. The potential for something serious to go wrong and not be picked up (or, more damningly, picked up but not corrected) is significant. Nothing I've seen has convinced me that Blizzard have had the capacity to do this.
I'm curious, what is it that you are looking for to convince you that Blizzard can handle this venture? Seriously? Do you honestly beleive that Blizzard hasn't done their research, especially since they are entering an extremely mature market? Do you honestly beleive that Blizzard hasn't looked at the successes and failures of other mmo's out there? Do you think that Blizzard is just chucking millions of dollars without any regard for quality and satisfaction of customers? So tell me again, what is it you are looking for in regards to a successful mmorpg launch? After you answered me that, also please tell us why it should be anybody else's business but Blizzard's to give us their strategy for launch?
Showed up about 11:00pm last night, figured that the line might be half way around the building, Turns out the line went around the building twice, took up most of the parking lot, and then for good measure it went down the street a couple hundred yards.
Talking to the Fry's Employee, he said that they had 2 or 3 truck loads of games on the way, but doubted thier would be enough for everyone.
The poor guy seemed rather alarmed and stressed seeing several thousand gamers surrounding the store.
According to him, the line started forming around 1pm.
Although everyone seemed to be in a good mood, I didn't stick around.
I'm curious, how would I, as a consumer, revolt against a publisher without simultaneously revolting against the developers? Vivendi is making some very anti-consumer moves here, which ought not be tolerated.
...preordered my CE through GameStop. I know some of the guys who work at the local one (that happens when you're their best customer...) and they say they've already received all their copies, but that they were only give exactly enough CEs to cover the preorders; they'll have none to put on the shelves. I hear the regional manager is livid about it, too, so Vivendi isn't making friends anywhere!
Unless, of course, scissors can't cut rock...
BTW, I tried to pre-order the CE at my preferred Gamestop back in late September yet was denied as they sold out already. Huh? I never heard of a CE game actually being limited in production, at least upon the initial release. I mean I can STILL buy Quake 3 in the tin from some stores!
Just during lunch I went to go pick up my reversed copy. I over-heard and was later told some interesting things. The manager was talking to someone about WoW, I could just tell. Sure enough after he hangs up he tells me to tell all my friends to buy the game today if they wanted to play. He claimed this initial shipment is it, VU/Blizzard (or whoever) is not allowing a second batch of games to be sold until Feb. 2005. After they sell the small amount of un-reversed copies that is it. Normally I would discount this immediately, yet one of my friends from 500 miles away said he heard the same thing from his store.
So any truth to this statement? I already picked up my copy but I'm curious.
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.