Digitial version of Guild Wars 2 sold out

[Don]

In related news, Zeus cited the cost of piracy being too high and is forced to buy games legitmately.

I mean I understand the reason they give or that every game these days need to pull an artificial shortage or people would think your game is dead before it's even launched, but having digital version sold out (while the retail version is not) is err... yeah...

[Shrinweck]

It's sold out because of the beta weekends, isn't it? They had to limit sales because otherwise it would basically be a miniature launch where it's probable they just don't have the infrastructure for. I thought about buying GW2 for the beta weekend but decided trying TERA tomorrow seemed cooler. Plus, if I like TERA I get to keep my character. GW2, not so much.

[Zeus]

I could buy 50 of these at my bud's EB if I could bring myself to care about the game on any level.

And really, digital version sold out? This screams of desperation to me

[Don]

I could buy 50 of these at my bud's EB if I could bring myself to care about the game on any level.

And really, digital version sold out? This screams of desperation to me

It's your standard "OMG too many people bought this game, must stop selling or server might explode (but you can still buy the retail version or the collector edition)!" tactic that everyone does these days. I think Nintendo was one of the first to do this because they had some kind of quasi fake shortage of Zelda games, except when Nintendo pulls it you can actually believe that there is a legitmate shortage because Zelda is actually, well, a rather well-known name. Usually, most companies are slightly more subtle than 'digital version sold out', though.

And let's get real here. If 5 million people wanted to pre order this thing I'd be throwing a party for a raging success, not saying stop selling because we hate money. Server capacity is one of the easiest thing to just throw money to solve. Unless you fear a bunch of people are going to buy this and then cancel and left you with a bunch of empty servers, there's never a reason to worry about selling too many copies of a game especially when it's sold digitally. I mean if I am printing CDs with my CD-R and a million people suddenly wanted my game maybe you can say well I can't possibly produce a million CDs so got to hold off the sales until I find a legitmate distributor, but again this is digital version we're talking about here.

[Julius Seeker]

Actually, this does occasionally happen with iOS titles; when the sales of the game begin to outpace code optimizations to support larger serverloads. This leads to the game being temporarily pulled from the app store until greater server loads can be handled.

[Oracle]

Selling out of a digital release is nothing short of retarded.

[Shrinweck]

Steam ran out of Bioshock cd keys once haha

[Don]

We're talking about really hyped up games that's supposed to be the next WoW here. This isn't like if one of us wrote a homegrown MMORPG and found that our home computer can't meet the demands of a million pre orders here.

I understand sometimes company want to limit digital sales because they want the retailers to actually be able to sell some stuff, but with retail in the decline this is rarely an issue anymore.

[Eric]

Blizzard's store ran out of digital sales of their mounts/pets when they first started offering them, I can't imagine them doing that intentionally since it was pure profit and they were selling in ridiculous amounts(and still are).

[Don]

Blizzard's store ran out of digital sales of their mounts/pets when they first started offering them, I can't imagine them doing that intentionally since it was pure profit and they were selling in ridiculous amounts(and still are).

How can you possibly ran out of digital pets? Did they ran out of virtual feed to raise those guys? If you use any standard sequencing stuff you usually get at least several billion before you ran out of IDs so unless they hand generated a bunch of IDs it is literally impossible to run out of those. I think they're all just attempts to hype up a product to create demand. Like I said Nintendo was the first to do it and it's not exactly a new thing to have sudden shortages of some popular stuff and then a week later an extra million copy of this stuff was magically found, but it's outright silly when it gets to the digital realm.

I used SOE's online buying stuff and the software was so bad that it can't even process more than 3 guys ordering from their virtual store at the same time (keeps on says failed to process and charged my credit card) and that's about the only way I can think of where you 'ran out' of virtual stuff, but I'm assuming we're not exactly dealing with such abject failures of virtual stores here.

[Eric]

I don't really understand how you hype it up to create demand when I saw half of the server running around with these little pets and mounts, and it was down for a day or 2, not like a week or a month.

Like I think for novelty items it's best to catch people on the impulse buy, then it is to create demand. I know a few people who regret spending money on a digital item they don't really use months later and just bought because everyone else did, vs people that try and buy, can't, and then think twice about it.

[Don]

I thought the pet was tied to some fundraising stuff so maybe they have issue with whoever they're donating to because it's way more than expected.

It's hard to even have any kind of automatically generated sequence with less than millions of numbers. Oracle database for example defaults to several billion.

[SineSwiper]

I think it's already been explained that this is a beta, and they have to limit sales to meet the demands of the servers. This is an MMO, not some single player game. Hell, if you think that was bad, the Rift launch basically had a new shard every 10 minutes. It's like they had 5-10 guys just building their own server farm as fast as they could.

[Don]

I think it's already been explained that this is a beta, and they have to limit sales to meet the demands of the servers. This is an MMO, not some single player game. Hell, if you think that was bad, the Rift launch basically had a new shard every 10 minutes. It's like they had 5-10 guys just building their own server farm as fast as they could.

And yet it's totally okay to continue selling the collector or any regular edition of the game from retailers because those are somehow totally different copies of the game compared to the digital version?

I mean you know those guys that project MMORPG XYZ is going to have 1.6 million subs instead of 1.75 or 1.50, they'd be pretty useful to consult to try to figure these things out. Yeah of course they're not always right, but it's better than nothing. RIFT, by the way, seems to be doing quite well at somewhere around half a million though of course since MMORPG subs are secret no one actually knows for sure, but since they keep on churn out updates for free one would assume they're probably hitting their goal. Pretty much every big MMORPG pulled one of these stunts but it's getting lamer each time it's repeated.

[Zeus]

This is a pre-order, not an instantly usable item. The entire point of pre-orders is to gauge demands. You don't sell out of pre-orders, period

[Don]

This is a pre-order, not an instantly usable item. The entire point of pre-orders is to gauge demands. You don't sell out of pre-orders, period

Preordering gets you into the beta and the argument was that the number of guys in beta is too many.

But of course this is silly. The whole point to sell tie beta access into pre order is hoping more people would pre order. If a million people pre ordered that'd be considered a very good thing even if that means you now have to have a million people in your beta. Not to mention you can still buy the collector attention, or go to any store and buy the regular version too. So if you order digitally and play on a laggy server that somehow is bad, but if you go to Best Buy to buy a copy and then have a laggy server that is somehow totally okay?

It's a pretty standard stunt to pull an artifical shortage to drive up demand. Even SWTOR did this, the game everyone say is going to be the WoW killer. People are projecting SWTOR to be somewhere around 1.X million subs. WoW, depending on who you believe, has probably like 5-12 million paying subs (China numbers are extremely hard to estimate). But no matter how you look at it, it's certainly at no more than 25% of WoW's population and yet the WoW-killer sold too much at 25% of WoW's population? It's not like SWTOR actually had any problem due to congestion aside from a few servers with crazy queues but that's expected since people put in crazy hours during launch, and you can always settle on a server with a less awesome name.

[Shrinweck]

The answer to unlimited pre-orders in this case is to pay for more servers, which is the only answer. Something they weren't willing to do yet. I'm not really sure what more there is to say on the topic :P

[Don]

The answer to unlimited pre-orders in this case is to pay for more servers, which is the only answer. Something they weren't willing to do yet. I'm not really sure what more there is to say on the topic

So it was totally okay if you bought the collector's edition or buy the regular version from a retailor and get in the beta for an allegedly bad experience but it's totally not okay if it was the digital version?

While one can say it's a ploy to give collector/retailers a boost, I think Guild Wars pretty much sold most of its copies digitally anyway. I sure don't recall seeing it in any prominent location at any stores but I see it on Steam sales all the time.

I mean are you saying companies should be worried about 10 million guys pre ordering the game because then they'd have to have capacity for 10 million guys in beta? Unless you think all those guys will cancel their order and leave you with a lot of useless hardware, it's pretty safe to go ahead and order those extra servers. I'm sure you can consult some statistics to figure out the % of guys who pre order that end up canceling (and I bet it's a very small %) and since GW2 doesn't even run on a monthly fee model, they should be trying to maximize box sales in the first place unlike a normal subscription based MMORPG who you can ostensibly argue that maybe you want smaller numbers at beginning if it gives a better experience because it'll retain people for the subscription money in the long run.

[Zeus]

So you limit beta access to the first x pre-orders and keep it open for more pre-orders. Shit ain't rocket science, no reason to have any limitations on pre-orders in any way

[Don]

So you limit beta access to the first x pre-orders and keep it open for more pre-orders. Shit ain't rocket science, no reason to have any limitations on pre-orders in any way

Then people wouldn't be pre ordering anymore because obviously a lot of people are only preordering the game for the beta access.

But since you still get beta access if you preorder the collector's edition online or just preorder it from a retail store it's pretty clear they're NOT worried about capacity really. Pretty sure if you want beta access you just drive down to a Best Buy or whatever instead, though by the time you get your beta code the beta weekend is probably over so not sure why they even allow this kind of stuff.

I mean it's a simple trick, you make a news about 'OMG pre order sold out' and then guys who never heard of it figure "I better pre order this next time it opens up!" and in theory you generate more sales on hype. I sort of fell for that in SWTOR too (though I probably was going to buy it anyway). In this case since GW2 is not a monthly fee model it may indeed be more advantageous to have tricks to boost box sales since they don't care (as much) about retaining player base. It probably costs them nothing to run a stunt like that so it's still a pure gain but it doesn't mean it's any less stupid.