HMV keeps Warhammer-ers from goblins The much-anticipated Warhammer online launches Thursday, with those who pre-ordered the game getting access from Monday. But the true obsessives who bought the Collectors Edition had access from Sunday - as long as they didn't buy it from HMV. The purchase process is somewhat complicated, with customers able to buy a box …
HMV were e-mailing people to promote the entire "early access" thing - I got at least 2 emails from them about it, where they were pushing just this game. Apparently you get two exclusive in-game items as well, or something similar. Glad I decided against it (I love the Warhammer novels, but won't pay a monthly subs to play a game, as it's not worth it for the amount of time I would use it).
Bad HMV. There will be many beardlings adding the name of HMV to their Book of Grudges.
Basically, the headstart program seems to have been a complete fiasco.
Most people who bought the pre-order pack from the EA store did not get the access keys to the game until late monday at the soonest (servers were open in the morning) apparently because they had run out of keys and had to generate some more. This problem was apparent over the weekend but no-one from EA is available then so nothing was communicated until monday morning.
Also, the digital download process (10Gb) didn't work at all. If you couldn't get the Open Beta client you were out of luck.
There are people who have still not received their access keys. There is a LOT of dissatisfaction being expressed on the EA "community" forums.
HMV could be said to not know better, being a music store first, but you'd think Game would. I tried pre-odering from them, and they didn't even know there were such a thing as early access codes.
Thankfully Play.com did and thus what little 'life' I had has been sucked away, making me one happy 'sad' geek.
I'll forgo the obvious comments about what kind of sad, pathetic life a person has to have in order to be buying a collectors edition for a one day headstart on an online game, and just go after HMV :)
Anyone who buys at HMV on a semi-regular basis should know three things:
-Never buy full priced items; HMV is way too expensive, but they do put on good deals quite often.
-Never trust the cashiers; they don't know what they're doing and don't give a crap.
-Never trust management; same as above.
So why is this even news-worthy again?
I'm a little confused by this whole "punters needed to leave their email address with HMV staff".
The pre-order box had 3 codes in it. One for Open beta(ha! That was a joke), one for Head Start and one for in-game items.
If you bought the pre-order box, then you had everything you needed. I gave my codes away after the disaster that was the beta.
After the shambles that GoA made of the beta start (Starts on Sunday? No, Monday? Oh, Tuesday... nice lack of communication too and then the firing of the Community Rep who felt insulted by a handful of posters and calling everyone Borderline Sociopaths) and then the distinctive lack of difference from Lord Of The Rings Online (my wife asked me if I'd gotten bored of waiting for Warhammer and had reinstalled LOTRO), this is surely the final icing on the cake for a lot of people.
Note to European companies: When you launch your account registration system on the same day as the beta launch after stating repeatedly THAT THERE WILL BE NO PROBLEMS and it goes tits up for 3 days, does it ever occur to you to look at the US company handling your game and see that they did Account Registration weeks before the actual game launch in order to iron out any problems?
One ex-I was looking forward to Warhammer fan, who's remaining with City Of Heroes and Tabula Rasa instead. (Besides, Sci-Fi>Fantasy any day)
This is happening to me right now. I'm pretty sure trade descriptions gives me some kind of claim.
I could cancel my order right now (but lose my collectors edition) and get a code from Play.com, or I could just buy another copy, but I don't see why I should - HMV have failed to deliver, and now keep giving empty promises.
That's odd... I purchased a proper Collector's Edition pre-order box from HMV months ago for £9.99 (which will be deducted from my final purchase of the CE) and that already had the codes inside it.
Or have HMV oversold their pre-orders once these special boxes ran out and they're now in the sticky stuff? Think I might camp outside my HMV on Thursday morning to make sure I get mine!
The thing putting me of Warhammer is that it will be full of teenagers - just like WoW is.
I have found:
Ultima Online - lots of teens
Everquest - mostly adults
Dark Age of Camelot - mixed
World of Warcraft - lots of teens, not many adults stick with WoW from what I could tell
Age of Conan - mostly adults (thanks to the 18 rating)
I'll stick with Age of Conan until one of the new games decides to make the sensible decision to have separate servers for adults and teens. As long as teens realise that "Adults server" means less sexual talk/behaviour rather than on the Teen server then I think they will stick to their servers.
I don't think Conan has anything that deserves the 18 rating - but it does wonders for the behaviour of people in the game.
Umm you and I must be playing two totally different versions of AoC then. I've bounced around to several servers and found just as many (sometimes more) teens and kids with their lame chuck norris jokes and constant pissing contests etc etc, in AoC as any other game. The 18 rating does nothing for the behavior of people in the game, aside from drawing more 14 year olds wanting to fap to pixelated tits and asking "when i get 2 fuk (insert name of character here)"
Huh.. I am with Kit. Not really had any issues with obvious teens in AoC. There is always the odd twonk but overall it has been pretty good. That being said since I live in Australia and have to play on the US servers I am usually on there off peak hours so the kiddies have probably finished whackin the weasle and are tucked up in bed. :)
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