I’m a sucker for Collectors Editions (CE) or Special Editions. During my gaming-life I’ve purchased all the CE’s of World of Warcraft and the Starcraft 2 game. If it wasn’t for the blood pack… I mean Annual Pass I’d probably also would have pre-ordered the CE for Diablo 3. The only CE my husband has bought is the Star Wars The Old Republic one. Wait… I’m wrong, somewhere there are two CE’s for Age of Conan that we bought.
I don’t know why I’m such a sucker for these expensive versions of the game. I have to admit that I never regretted buying them, except for the Conan-one perhaps. Then again, I still play WoW constantly.
I think the big thing that drags my wallet out of my bag and buys these CE’s is the art books they provide. I love art books! When you have a look at my bookcase, you will see so many books about drawing and painting that I could build a small cat-house out of them. I use them to get inspiration for my own drawings and paintings, but I also just love to see how the creative team of a gaming company just comes up with all these fantastic beings I encounter in the game. In game pets are nice too, I always love it when I can pull out my mini-Diablo pet from the first WoW CE and have people asking me where I got it. It’s truly just for showing off though. The music will immediately be put on my iPod, but I have to admit that I don’t listen to it as much as I’d like to at times. Podcasts and audio books will take up my ear-time.
Now I was in a bit of a dilemma; I’ve received two e-mails this week. One from Funcom (ow how you burned me with Conan) and one from Arena-net. Both prompting me to pre-order the CE’s for Guildwars 2 and The Secret World. I was already afraid that this year would become expensive with all the new mmo’s coming out, but after trying Tera for a few weeks, I can say that I won’t be buying that game (£5 well spend to test it and not have to buy to game to find that out). Just a quick side note: the CE for TERA is pretty impressive. That lion-mount is beautiful!
Anyhow, back to TSW and GW2; I checked out TSW first http://www.thesecretworld.com/buy/ , since I could already pre-order that. I do feel that you can get some nice things for their digital upgrades, but in the end there was no valid reason for myself to get a lifetime sub or even the £15 upgrade for a pet, another character slot or a jacket in game. I just want to play the game casually and experience it. Now I was wondering if that would have been different if they would have offered an art book with their most expensive version… I’m not quite sure. I love the concept of TSW and I can imagine how much creepy art there could be in that book. Perhaps I should be happy that I just got the normal version, or at least my wallet is.
Then there’s GW2.https://buy.guildwars2.com/ Their CE is pretty impressive, but so is the price tag; £129. It is just too much for me nowadays. I am going to pre-order the normal edition and just be happy that at least that’s a game I don’t have to pay a monthly fee for.
In all honesty I am still debating if I want to purchase the CE for Mists of Pandaria when it’s released. Perhaps I’ve become a bit jaded with CE’s. I’m always afraid I’m wasting money and I will stop playing the game after 2 months.
How about you guys? Going to buy CE’s for any of the games that will be released soon?
The Blue Haired Geek 