EPTPrologue
So what happened you ask? Well, I'll tell you! After being signed up for the SW:ToR beta for god knows how long, I finally got a chance to try the game a couple of weeks ago (the thanksgiving weekend). Beta testing MMO's is a pretty big deal for me because it gives me a chance to evaluate the game before deciding on a purchase. I know what you're thinking, yeah, I could have just waited for the free trials or whatever which are bound to come eventually... but it's not the same. Personally I love playing MMO's the first couple of weeks or even months after they come out. Yes, there may be bugs or imbalances that still need to be polished out, but that just adds flavor. But most of all - the game isn't even close to figured out yet. It's an unexplored frontier, everything is new and interesting. There are real choices to be made and fun to be had playing your character... later on it usually turns into a simple grind to cap/repeat endgame affair.
Anyway I was in the beta! Just for a weekend, but hey, that's still plenty of time. Well it turns out that was the absolute worst weekend ever for me personally and my internet connection. I barely managed to get one character up to level 14 - and it was a jedi consular. Yuck. Puny stream of magical rocks + ugly lizard man, not to mention a story I just found incredibly boring? How disappointed I was... At that point I was almost certain that I'd pass on this game and never look at it again. However, as always, Blizzard knew exactly what to do to solve my problem. WoW patch 4.3 came and with it, the raid finder and an all new raid instance! Not to mention transmorgratification? Something like that anyway.
It took me a total of one week to cancel my WoW subscription after experiencing the raid finder. Transmog is nice, I'm not going to deny it, a very welcome feature. The new raid though... it just felt lackluster in every way. Knowing that Dragon Soul was the only thing I'd spend doing for at least 6 months, possibly more (until MoP comes out) helped immensely in my decision to put WoW on a shelf at least until the next expansion.
So I figured I'd give ToR another chance. But there wasn't going to be another beta weekend. All that was left was early access and launch. I called up a local game store where I've bought pretty much every game I've owned and asked when they were going to get ToR. This was December 13th. The guy told me that the game would be available at the store on the 20th in plentiful supply, but that I should pre-order it if I wanted to make sure to get it. I figured this would be the simplest solution - pre-ordering online for the early access surely had no sense at this point, seeing how they were going to stagger the invites based on pre-order date. Plus, the estimated delivery dates didn't inspire confidence... the average was 7-21 business days. Ouch.
Enter Amazon
Two days pass. It's the 15th and I'm having a blast watching a couple of streams from the earliest waves of invitees. Apparently my mistake had been rolling Republic. Come launch day, I would definitely correct that mistake.
I was looking for a page I had bookmarked when I accidentally clicked on the homepage link for the store where I pre-ordered the game from. Looking up from my phone, I'm surprised at first... I expected to see a photography site I used to visit. Instead I was greeted with "Star Wars: The Old Republic! Pre-orders now available! [Times New Roman, size 8]The shipping date for SW:ToR has been moved to February 2012." The fuck?
I called the store and the guy said that yeah, it'd probably get here in February... but they didn't really know anything at this point. So I cancelled my pre-order immediately and turned to damage control. I tried to find an online retailer that would ship the game as close to the release date as possible - hitting the release date at this point would be impossible. After an hour or so of not finding anything suitable at all, I figured I may as well go for the sure thing and order from Amazon - "it'll get here eventually," I thought, "but at least it'll get here." At this point they had already received the boxes and the pre-ordering period was over. A few minutes later I left my order on amazon.de where I was informed (again) that shipping to my address would take 7-21 business days. I'd get the game... but almost a week late, at best. Sigh.
A few minutes later, I'm checking my e-mail and sure enough I got a confirmation e-mail from Amazon and a... wait what? There's two emails from Amazon? I check the other one and sure enough, there's a pre-order code in there. I enter the code and a day later (Friday evening) I was making my first character. At that point I was really too busy scheming to kill my master to worry about when the physical copy of the game would arrive and allow me to input the product code.
Well, it turns out I was right not to worry. Today is the 19th, it is the 2nd business day after I placed my order. And the game was waiting in my mailbox.
TL;DR
After getting screwed by a local retailer, I order SW:ToR from amazon.de on the 15th of December (Thursday afternoon). They send me a pre-order code and Firday evening I'm playing in early access. Monday morning the game is waiting in my mailbox. Amazon, I will never doubt you again.
P.S. Kudos to BioWare as well. I've read an incredible amount of whining about the game's launch this past week but all I've seen has been an incredibly smooth, methodical process that actually resulted in 4 days of early access for EVERYONE. That's includes people who pre-ordered the thing in December. Amazing work guys and oh, what a game you have made...
