One Week Later: WAR Collector’s Edition
April 2, 2008 – 12:18 pm
It’s been a week since the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Collector’s Edition was announced and made available to the world. A full week, and there are still some of the 60,000 limited edition copies left. Does that surprise any of you?
Let me start by saying this is not a doom-and-gloom post, predicting the imminent failed launch of 2008’s most anticipated MMORPG. This is me just theorizing why they haven’t sent out a “Woohoo! We sold out!” press release yet. With my luck, they’ll probably release it 10 minutes after I press “submit post!”
People want to know what they’re paying up to $100 for (that’s what it costs Canadians). No-one can argue that this collector’s edition isn’t amazingly full of WAR goodies from the hard-cover comic, art book, and table top figurine to the in-game exclusive items, faces, head-start program, and open beta access. All of that is a really good value for your dollar compared to other CEs, that is, if you actually end up liking the game.
Unfortunately, none of the contents of the collectors edition box, nor EA Mythic’s information releases of late paint a clear picture of what the game will actually be like. Sure, you’re reading lots of interviews about this and that, seeing some screenshots, and watching some staged videos, but how can that clearly represent the end product? IMO, they’re trying to sell us on the WAR concepts, not WAR itself… You also have to admit, there hasn’t been very much cool, mind-blowing information shared lately. Just look at the content of the last two newsletters. They are much weaker than many of the previous ones.
Another, perhaps, bigger reason for why they haven’t sold through all 60,000 CE copies is due to the announcement of yet another delay and Mark Jacob’s (understandable) comments that even the Q3 target is “set in mud.” Only the most devout, hardcore of fans will pre-buy a game that is 6-8+ months away. You may not get charged for it until the release date, but it’s more hassle than most people want to worry about.
There are also only ~600,000 people signed up for closed beta (though they plan on breaking 1M according to Keen). 60,000 CE copies assumes that roughly 10% of of all current beta sign-up customers are willing to fork out ~$100 for all the goodies and a guaranteed spot in beta. I think that estimate is a bit high to be honest. Many of my friends and I signed up for WAR beta as soon as we could without really knowing anything about it or any guarantee that we’d support it at release. The fact that we were all disenfranchised, ex-DAOC players, it’s actually kind of funny to look back on, but I digress. The point is, we were merely curious and nothing more. I think that many, if not most of the people who signed up for beta have merely done it out of curiosity (heck, I signed up for LOTRO and AOC betas and never even followed the games in development). People want to play a free demo, not actually test the game. Compound this with my third paragraph above, and I don’t think a 10% sale to those who have signed up for beta is a guarantee.
Finally, it could just be that it’s only been a week! It took many months for their beta ticker to climb to 600,000+ and it will certainly take time for them to sell through 60,000 pre-order copies. Heck, they’ve got until Q3 and beyond to sell through them and still turn a profit. They aren’t actually making any money off the pre-orders until the game ships and people are charged anyway.
I have no doubt that they’ll sell through eventually, but I was secretly hoping for a bit more demand. A sellout in less than a week would have confirmed all the hype surrounding WAR to many competitors and potential subscribers watching from a distance. It would have gone a long way to show that all the board spammers, bloggers, and beta-philes were as supportive with their wallets as they were with their frenzied discussion. I was easily drawn in by the marketing wiles of Josh, Jeff, and Paul but I think it’s time for a little less hyperbole and a lot more deliverance of the goods. In other words, show less staged videos and get the game open-beta ready.
I don’t see the support for WAR dwindling over the coming months, but unless we start seeing something new, it may just plateau in NA/Europe (they’ve yet to focus on Asian markets, and once they do, I’m sure that will give them a boost).
* PS - I bought a copy of the CE but I’m not sure what I’ll do with it yet…
5 Responses to “One Week Later: WAR Collector’s Edition”
I think the wording for the 60,000 was somewhat tricky. I’ve read several different releases and in one of them it said “only 60,000 available in Europe”… that makes me wonder. That DOES sound a bit more realistic for Europe. I’m willing to bet that the U.S. / North America will see a lot more CE’s and that could be why they haven’t said anything about being sold out — because they probably never will.
By Keen on Apr 2, 2008
I have little doubt they will sell out, but at the same time, I’m not that concerned how fast they do fly off the shelves. CE’s aren’t for everyone, even die hard fans. Some can’t afford them, some don’t care much for the goodies, and (I assume) many people don’t want to plunk down 80 bucks right now for something they won’t see for a *half year* — unless they’re desperate to get into the open beta. The delay announcement probably stunted the sales somewhat, as predicted by the dev team, but that’s to be expected.
I picked up my WoW CE off of the shelves of Best Buy. Never pre-ordered, wasn’t concerned about the CE’s selling out. Strange how time changes perspective.
By Syp on Apr 2, 2008
@ Syp - I pre-ordered my WoW CE box, but I don’t recall how early before launch they were actually advertised/available. It couldn’t have been much more than a few months… From what I recall, many regions of North America were actually sold out of WoW game boxes at launch.
Not that it mattered because the first few days of play were completely brutal due to all the server issues (crashes and queues).
@Keen - I think it might be 60k in Europe and another 60k in North America, and I’m not too sure whether or not the warhammer.com site tracks only NA beta signups or NA+Europe.
If it’s 120k total copies for 644k total beta sign-ups, that’s hoping to sell one CE copy for every five people who signed up for beta…
If that’s the case, I think they WAY overshot at this early stage. They’ll eventually sell out though, I’m sure. It would be a bad sign to see them lying around a year later considering all the good stuff they have inside. It would be a cautionary tale for all future CE devs.
By Snafzg on Apr 2, 2008
Attempting to keep the public interested while continually pushing back the release date, I think, is hurting Mythic. If they knew when it was coming out, they could chop up all the information they had and give it to us evenly to keep us happy and interested. I think this is what they’ve tried to do, but every time they push it back they have to cut the remaining info into smaller and smaller peices until they basically have nothing left to give us at all, that is, if they don’t want to run out of new things to tell about Warhammer 5 months before launch.
So to fill the gap, they give us a Collector’s Edition… except, you can’t really have it, not yet anyway, and you don’t really know what you’re getting, because they’ve horded the last bit of crucial information on the game for later.
As much as I like being kept in the loop, I think Blizzards policy of keeping quiet is better, letting the development team focus on their work until they’re reasonably sure they have a product they want to release, then put the marketing process into high gear. At least that way, you haven’t frustrated any customers before they’ve even shelled out some cash.
By Knash on Apr 2, 2008
^^ Very insightful!
By Snafzg on Apr 2, 2008