I’ll admit it now:

PRE-ORDER BONUSES CONFUSE THE HELL OUT OF ME.

Maybe I could handle it if I only played one game and only had to consider one expansion, but I play them ALL and we have three expansions coming out in November.

Damn you, devs!

We are paying $39.99 each for these expansions. Be it WoW or LOTRO or EQII, it’s forty bucks of our hard earned money, which we could otherwise spend on movies, beer (mmmm, beer) or I dunno… cereal.

Pre-order these expansions and the companies offer incentives. Pre-orders help them decide how many glossy boxes to ship where, and gives them that warm fuzzy feeling of love and revenue. Ahhhh, the clinking of coins into the offering chest.

Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria offers a “Deep Miner’s Helm” (whatever the heck that is) and “Seeker of Kazad-dum” (no clue either, but speculation is that it’s a title. Ho hum). The LOTRO site also says “one in-game item token” and “Mines of Moria Cloak”, though this is not mentioned on the EB Games site. I hate not knowing for sure what comes with a pre-order and the dweebs that currently work at EB Games (and its many affiliates) don't even know what a LOTRO is; Moria is just a line item in a database to them.

EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey’s retail pre-order promises a cute little pewter Dire Bear, as well as its in-game counterpart, a Dire Bear pet that grows up to be a rather nice looking mount. Add in a Legends of Norrath loot card. At least the offer is a little less ambiguous this time—SOE has had issues in the past with the wording of offers (which varied a LOT between retailers), resulting in a number of players feeling ripped off when they did not get what they expected in their package. To their credit, SOE always made up the difference by giving EVERYONE whatever the poorly worded offer may or may not have promised... but I'm still nervous about EB games getting me my bear.

World of WarCraft: Wrath of the Lich King offers… nothin’. You get the box. He is one stingy bastard. This from the company that fills a swimming pool with money every week. Oh wait… EB Games proudly says you’ll get it on time for release or your money back. Hang on, that’s your money back on shipping costs. Big freaking deal.

Let’s face it, Blizzard just doesn’t care. They know you’ll buy their crap, even if they made you walk to WalMart and stand in line and pay ten bucks more to get it.

Which reminds me… you can pay THIRTY dollars or more* for the WoW expansion Collector’s Edition, and I know some people who are going to do just that. For this price they get a couple of DvDs (making of and soundtrack), an art book, mouse pad (people still use those?), two starter card decks and a useless, errr… exclusive pet. I’ll be able to tell which morons ponied up for the monetary wastage by counting special little wyrm pets in game.
*At the time of writing, the official pre-order sites had no prices listed and Google turned up results ranging from $69.82 to $99.99.

LOTRO also has a Collector’s Edition on offer for Mines of Moria, at $79.99. It includes a “Full color Collector’s Edition Starter Guide” (we used to call these “manuals” and they came free), an online badge to identify your spendy-arse on the official LOTRO forums, three in-game tokens to allow you to choose from eight different in-game items (what a cool idea – letting US choose), a poster, a better-than-average cloth map, DVD with art and soundtrack and a gold-plated One Ring Replica that you can wear to parties, weddings and funerals. Oh yeah, you will also be entered in a draw for $25,000 in prizes, of which top prize, “a Game Media Entertainment Package” is valued at $3,200.


WHY NOT GO DIGITAL?

Oh ye voices of the desert, preaching to the sheeple. Don’t even get me started on digital downloads and their pre-orders. They come with a whole other set of stuff that they may or may not have. A lot of people prefer digital download – saves on shipping, gas to the store, yet another box to find a place for.

LOTRO wisely offers their digital version for $29.99, a 25% savings off the boxed version.

EQII stupidly does not offer any discount, and you don’t get a bear mount either. Duh.

WoW of course, in their tradition of “we don’t care,” will offer digital download for WotLK, eventually. When they feel like it. Current estimates are that this will be about a week after launch, and that it has something to do with the scads of money involved in putting their product on retail shelves. Someone with a degree can explain this one to me

Pick your poison, people.

Any way I cut it, I'm looking at $120 plus taxes, plus shipping. They had better be DAMN good expansions... or you'll hear about it here.

;-)#
Brasse

ps. For Wren and everyone else who has had pre-order hassles that keep causing heartburn every time they think about it, please post your rants and vents and righteous rage here in this special thread.