Some people have all the luck...

by Elizabeth Harper Jan 15th 2007 at 9:29AM

When Ramanan tipped us off that he'd managed to snag a copy of the Burning Crusade on January the 12th -- four entire days before the official release -- the very first thing I did was to scout all possible stores near my house to see if I could find anyone else making a similar mistake. No such luck! However, despite Wal-Mart's careful planning, it seems that at least some stores have stocked shelves with the expansion a bit early. Ramanan made off with a copy from his local Wal-Mart and was able to install and upgrade his account -- though it still sounds as though expansion content is blocked. At least for a while longer.

Tags: azeroth, bc, burning crusade, BurningCrusade, outland, tbc, the burning crusade, TheBurningCrusade, warcraft, world of warcraft, wow

Filed under: Expansions, The Burning Crusade

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

the six winger Jan 15th 2007 9:39AM

Yup I'm going home to two copies tonight(one for my wife and one for me both CE). Sometimes it's who you know :) /boast

andy Jan 15th 2007 9:46AM

/slap

ill be getting my 4 CE copies tomorrow. after work, when all the other idiots clamber for the portal, crashing the eastern kingdoms server, and when i do eventually get to the other side, im sure to be ganked by whatever guild who has decided to grieve the portal all night.

/sigh

i can hardly wait

PubBoy Jan 15th 2007 9:51AM

Me too, i was lucky enough to get it yesterday from a Blockbuster store... Im all installed, re-patched and waiting for 11PM UK time :D

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/141/358145990_5eaf566988_o.jpg

Banana Kid Jan 15th 2007 9:59AM

I'm going to call around today to find out where would be my best bet for getting the CE. Then I'm gonna bring it home, and make me a Draenei. A Mage.

Hopefully I can find a fairly empty server, so as to avoid queues. One can only hope.

DrBonez Jan 15th 2007 10:46AM

I hate you all.

Waterford only got 2 copies of CE and I know about 50 people at least who ordered it.

Tiamazzo Jan 15th 2007 10:50AM

Blizzard is one step a head of you 2. The other side of the portal is Sanctuary. Camp it all day, no one can flag PVP there. =P

Same holds for Shattrath, the Capital City of Outland. As for the content, I wouldn't expect it to be up untill after the 5 o'clock am Restarts. Buying it 4 days ahead doesn't provide you with anymore then downloading the Beta client, and anyone could have done that without a beta key if you just knew where to look. =P

Ikuu Jan 15th 2007 10:56AM

Like I said in another comment, got my copy in the mail this morning from Gameplay. Shame the content is all blocked, oh well, come 11pm GMT I'll be able to play. Got my Rogue literally two seconds away from the portal waiting.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ikuu/358022517/

Jacko Jan 15th 2007 11:08AM

Beta users still have to install the retail expansion.

Revovisions Jan 15th 2007 11:10AM

There is more than one way to enter Outland so don't worry on having grievers standing around the portal barring the way for everyone. (alliance behavior) : P And if u do want to enter the dark portal just enter before 3pm cuz alliance are usually still in school at that time. lol

PubBoy Jan 15th 2007 11:15AM

@ Tia

Nope, if you read the forums, the contect is live now, its just the activation page for upgrading your account from WoW to WoW:TBC that isnt going live until midnight CET.

Also the maintainance is being skipped tonight.

And the client stopped being beta when they made it gold and started printing the install disks.

Got my char parked at the portal so as soon as i can get my account upgraded (which i suspect is going to be the hard bit) ive just got to log in, move my char forward about 5 foot and bingo ill be stuck in the ether with the thousends of players trying to cram onto the outland server cluster :P.

Fingers crossed Blizz have prempted this and hosted both the upgrade webpage on an insane high bandwidth pipe and things will goto plan :D ( Fat Chance - But im in an optimistic mood :P )

Anyway, if the worst happens, ill leave TBC alone and mess around on my alt (and yes you can log in to the regular game with the TBC client still, been doing that all day).

Taima Jan 15th 2007 11:16AM

my copy of TBC dropped on my door mat this morning.. gotta love internet shopping

Tony Jan 15th 2007 11:31AM

Will there be an option to buy this as a download? Considering it's such an internet centric title, I'd honestly rather just drop $40 on a download and install it.

ramanan Jan 15th 2007 11:31AM

@PubBoy

You can upgrade your account right now. As I mentioned in the linked article, I've done so already. (It's possible this didn't actually do anything, and i'll be required to do it again, but I don't think this is the case.)

Jeff Taylor Jan 15th 2007 11:33AM

@11. Out of curiousity, who did you buy the BC from online?

Tiamazzo Jan 15th 2007 11:35AM

I haven't read anything official about the content being there right now. Seems silly to be running servers that no one is using. A link would be nice. =) Regardless, I know there's no maintainance planned, but if everything is good to go, why issue a restart?

The Beta was still the Beta client when the beta servers were up and the beta was running. Gold is judged by how many copies it sales, not just someone saying "Ok it's gold now". It won't be the live version until you can use the new content.

Ramanan Sivaranjan also explains that he was able to upgrade his account via https://upgrade.worldofwarcraft.com/expansion/ but was unable to play the new content.

Orin Jan 15th 2007 11:42AM

@12. No. Blizzard said they do not have this. There is a sticky in the official general forums.

Jp Jan 15th 2007 11:51AM

@15 - 'Gold' is the industry term for when the game has gone to print retail copies, as this is usually a finalized copy, and what will be seen come release day. It's a big step in the development of a game, as it is the culmination of months, even years, of hard work.

Of course, BC went gold in early November(The announcement of BC's release date was the same day they went gold, so said Neth), to meet demand. So, to say what #10 said, "It stopped being beta when they started printing install disks", is a bit wrong, since we were in almost 3 whole months of beta testing thereafter, which will be seen in the form of patches(which is why Blizz wants us to hold onto 2.0.3 patch, so we don't have to redownload it).

andy Jan 15th 2007 12:02PM

erm, @#6.

you mean to tell me i cant be ganked in outland on a pvp server?

PubBoy Jan 15th 2007 12:17PM

Fair comment Jp, although I think you knew what I was getting as, even if I didn’t quite word it right.

I don’t see what activating on worldofwarcraft.com/expansion/ would achieve seeing as this is for the US servers. You cant log onto the US account maintenance servers so this is maybe why you haven’t seen anything happen. Anyway wow-europe.com/expansion/ seems to be back up (for now) and counting down so lets hope it stays that way. Still if the upgrade page falls over again closer to the time, ill try anything so thanks for the info!

To Tia, I'll be honest, I made an informed guess at the TBC servers being up and running already, so no blue backing I'm afraid. Working in an online environment as I do, I would really hope Blizz have been running in the TBC servers for weeks now, If they were my responsibility I certainly wouldn’t want to switch a cluster on just in time for an event like this. My best guess is they have been stress testing the hardware, double checking the software and triple checking everything again to make sure us players have as smooth a launch as is possible (a massive undertaking due to the sheer numbers involved).

I would like to think that some where in a darkened, very noisy server room, someone is sitting there with a big red plunger ready to let all the 1’s and 0’s through to the new servers :D

If it goes off without a hitch, that’s one hell of a technical achievement and some network/sysadmins deserve their beer tokens :D

/hope /pray

See you on the other side!