A tale of CE tribulations

[harniq]

Day 1: It is tuesday the tenth of april. I am in Belgium, but I need to be somewhere in the middle of Germany by 10 o'clock AM. To complicate things, I have to drop off my girl at the train station at exactly 6:15 or wait for another hour. I wake up at 5:30, cuddle for a minute and jump out of bed. No time for delays today. Get dressed, eat, and get in the car. At 6:14 she's on her train back home. Perfect.
I drive up the highway and anxiously wait until the German border. Brilliant, time to step on it. At 210 per hour I speed down the Autobahn towards the Mediamarkt who confirmed they would sell the Collector's Edition of Guild Wars 2. They couldn't reserve any though. This particular store opens at 10:00.

I'm there at exactly 9:58. There is some people waiting but no real line. I go stand right in front of the doors. They open, I get in and walk straight to the games department (Spieleabteilung in German). No game. Especially no CE. What did I do wrong? I find a store guy to help me. They will come later that week, but he is legally allowed to place a reservation since the street date has passed. I place my reservation.

Day 2: It's wednesday, 14:00 and I haven't received a call. Did something go wrong? I call the store, and though several shipments had come, no GW2 CE. They will call me sometime next week. I panic. Where to go? I google Mediamarkt in the neighboring cities. I call it a day early and get in my car. 150 km and 3 stores later no games. Hundreds or regular Vorverkauf though. One store guy smirks I might find some on Ebay. Panic changes to anger, anger changes to rage. I'm starting to summon spirits here. OK Calm down. I lost. Too bad.

New plan. Order the Deluxe online and buy the CE junk used sometime later on Amazon. Awesome. Flip out creditcard and.... nothing. Apparently using a Belgian credit card from a German IP on the GW2 website is considered some kind of scam. Yay a.net officially considers me a scammer.

Day 3: Work. At least something I like. Everything goes great, I get congratulated on breaking a milestone 2 months early. At least something good this week. I call my bank.. credit card works fine np. I retry the website, doesn't work... so far for credit card. I call death and despair inside but outside keep working like a merry man.
It is 15:20 and I'm like ... let's call one last time to the store where I placed my reservation. I don't know what they did wrong but hey maybe, just maybe, someone fixed something. Or someone made a fatal mistake and at least I'd know I'd never get the CE. Better to know the bad news than hope for nothing right? So I call. The woman is like omg yea it has been here for three days but we thought it would be larger but the figure is not in there so we put them aside but we put them in the store today but put your on the side so you can come get it with your reservation form (in German).

I am at the hot seat so I can't even leave just yet. For 2 more hours I pray to the 6 gods nothing goes wrong in the time in between. So at 17:00 I drive to the Mediamarkt who claims to have my reservation. I go up to the store clerk and he hands me a dvd case. It says collector's edition, says I can collect it on release. Mentions everything including the figurine and hero's band. OK let's pay.

I open my wallet. I want to take my german bank card. Nothing. I used it yesterday at the supermarket and left it with the groceries. OK no problem let's use my visa card... which is not accepted. But they have an ATM machine. But that's 10% extra WHO THE F GIVES A F. I get 150 euro's, I pay with gems, I mean money and walk out with my prepurchase box. I drive back to the office to make 10 photocopies of my purchase ticket to put at different places so I will always have at least one.

I get home. I'm happy. What a week. But I finally have what I waited for for 4 long years.

[Guided Daggers]

Sounds like quite the agonizing week indeed. But you're forgetting that it's been 5 years ;)

[harniq]

Sounds like quite the agonizing week indeed. But you're forgetting that it's been 5 years ;)

Belgian too? :)

[Guided Daggers]

No, I just put that there to confuse people.

Nah, just kidding, I'm from Belgium, yes :P

[Lady Rhonwyn]

You call that tribulations?

What about those of us that did order, did pay, and still aren't sure if they'll ever even get a pre-purchase code?

Right now, thanks to bol.com, I'm completely losing my enthusiasm of the game. My advice to ANet would be to never ever do business with bol.com again.

[harniq]

You call that tribulations?

What about those of us that did order, did pay, and still aren't sure if they'll ever even get a pre-purchase code?

Right now, thanks to bol.com, I'm completely losing my enthusiasm of the game. My advice to ANet would be to never ever do business with bol.com again.

I had the same feeling after driving home. I was preparing a complete rant to email to a.net about how this is not the way to handle fans and what not. Until someone told me "he was not allowed to tell me anything so he wouldn't" before telling he was pretty convinced of buying GW2.

This person also told me I wouldn't pay 75 euros for the CE junk if it was sold separately. This is true. In 3 months you will find used CE versions on ebay and amazon for 30 euro's or so. Pre-purchase the deluxe and you will have everything 30 euros cheaper. It is the best bet for anyone who didn't find a CE box.

[raspberry jam]

Hahaha. That's nothing. Wait until you hear my story:

Long ago, like in March or something: walk into Gamestop, pre-order CE.

Yesterday: walk into Gamestop, pre-purchase my CE which they had gotten for me since I pre-ordered. Got the code and all. Will pick up the rest when it's released.

Best part is I used the company credit card so I didn't pay a dime for it.

[Shrandar]

Hahaha. That's nothing. Wait until you hear my story:

Long ago, like in March or something: walk into Gamestop, pre-order CE.

Yesterday: walk into Gamestop, pre-purchase my CE which they had gotten for me since I pre-ordered. Got the code and all. Will pick up the rest when it's released.

Best part is I used the company credit card so I didn't pay a dime for it.

Aww despite your misgivings about the game you bought the CE anyway (for the effect forgetting that you used the company credit card ;))

[raspberry jam]

Aww despite your misgivings about the game you bought the CE anyway (for the effect forgetting that you used the company credit card ;))

As if I would say no to free stuff. Besides, that Rytlock statue looks cool whether the game is good or not.

[harniq]

As if I would say no to free stuff. Besides, that Rytlock statue looks cool whether the game is good or not.

True. The rytlock and art stuff will be scattered in my room whether I'll play the game or not. In 20 years when the servers are shut down, I will still be looking at Rytlock at my desk and Charrlie* in my bed and remember good old times.

* I called him Vatlaaw before the missus found out his real name is Charrlie. And since she can remember Charrlie more easily than Vatlaaw, I kinda got into the habit of calling him Charrlie too. And she's calling me crazy for paying 150 for a "Charrlie statue", no use explaining he's actually Rytlock.