They’re absolutely subjective, which is why Blizzard can’t and shouldn’t spend time worrying about them.
If there was a tangible, objective advantage, I do believe Blizzard would try to remedy it, as they already have by taking out progression content.
And yet it’s these subjective experiences that keep people enjoying the game. I’m not sure if they should be ignored outright, I don’t think they can account for them all but it should have some level of consideration. You only get one launch night and now it’s a premium experience. It’s difficult to really know the consequences of that, but I can’t imagine that ariving 3 days after the launch will be a memorable experience and that sets a bad tone for an expansion. If we consider it’s the memories we collect that adds value to MMo’s.
But I regress this delves more into philosophical questions and debate then I’d like to get into on a forum.
I can say it’s best for anyone that doesn’t have the epic edition to turn off all forms of communication, don’t come to the forums, turn off guild, trade, and general chat. Because people are going to intentionally spoil things.
I’ve read the back and forth here.
To me - the early access isn’t a big deal. Because I often skip the first few days anyway. Who wants to deal with buggy launch servers and login wait times? Or maintenance downtime. I just do other stuff, and when it’s settled down a bit I drop in.
The rest of the stuff looks like standard collector “stuff”. I used to buy those for the mount and the pet. Plus the goodies. Mousepad, art book, DVD and… box… Last one I just bought the electronic one. I have enough “stuff” already.
I’m sure Blizzard made a business decision to add 3 days of early access into the mix on purpose. Here is my take and it’s different than the majority opinion in this thread.
To me it is a sign of flagging sales and an attempt to amp or juice up the launch by throwing something out there to bait people into spending more cash to buy into the next expansion. Well duh. (Captain Obvious.) But if Blizzard was confident in the product launch, they would have just offered a standard collector edition option and been done with it.
As the game gets older and the player base shrinks, they gotta keep upping the dosage of each expansion “hit” to get people to stick around. Maybe an expansion or two after this one, you’ll get a 1 week preview and the ability to gear boost one char at the start to full Mythic Raid gear iLevel from the current expansion, in the pre-patch time period, so you are ready to rock -n- roll in that first early preview week. Or they’ll have some other carrot to dangle in front of people that will stir up angst in the forums…
Bottom line: I’m not going to get wrapped around an axle worrying about stuff I don’t have any control over and don’t care about anyway.
personally I’m not buying it. I think it’s a crappy move and I can see them do something else rather than a 3 day head start.
Why is it so hard for you to understand they are putting it exclusively in ONE pack because they know how massive a factor it is going to be? Even after they had previously only tried it in two packs for D4. They know how big of a deal it is and chose to piss off A LOT of people by putting it especially into only the most expensive pack.
They would not have risked the bad PR if they weren’t expecting a huge payoff.
No it’s common sense and doesn’t even require that much intelligence to figure out.
Overpriced cosmetics are targeted at whales. Most people do not buy them. They know they only get around the same % of buyers for cosmetics every time. Early access is a much bigger factor as they’ve found from experience with D4, so they put it exclusively in the most overpriced pack knowing they’ll get a lot more out of it that way.
Amazing people are delusional enough to believe some ugly blue mount is going to drive sales of a $90 pack and not early access fomo after many many players have tried to start at start time every expansion release for the past 20 years. You have 20 years of history of the servers being overwhelmed by interest at start time and don’t think early access is preying on that desire to start the minute it launches?
And, no, the tiny number of posters you can find saying they don’t care and weren’t going to start then anyway are not representative of the majority. Again, we have 20 years of history and several expansion launches to look at to see how popular starting at start time is.
I’m not buying it, neither should you, but for those who do it will be like this:
I do not see why anyone even tries to do day one. It’s always a mess, and frustrating.
" Its early access" there fore “you will not get access” due to server issues. 
Was going to buy the epic edition anyway, so I guess it’s a bonus. Still surprised by the early access, but I doubt the world will feel any fuller on day four than it will be on day one.
We’re almost a year out from the expansion still so I imagine a lot of people currently saying nope to it will be pulled in later. The FOMO will intensify the closer you get to launch.
The only real solution is if there’s enough pushback, Blizzard will release a separate free promo for early access since they can’t change the packs now. IE: they might offer a twitch drop of early access or something at some point.
100%
I mean look at everything you get with it it’s kind of a no-brainer. Ironically I never even factored in the three day early access as a deciding factor.
I skip the first week of every new expansion anyway playing that week is always a horrible experience
Its not $90. Depending on how you value the bundled items, it’s perhaps $10.
It’s $25 for most people since most of the cosmetics are crap they’ll never use or care about. $15 for game time + $25 early access.
It’s still disgusting either way. Everyone should have access at the same time as they always have. Any price for early access in this game is wrong.
splitting the playerbase is pretty awful. blizz usually discounts games a couple months after a release so ill be avoiding launch for the first time with WoW and playing my backlog.
I plan to get it, though not for the early access (though I will use it). I also honestly think the staggered start will be a net positive for server stability and login queues at launch.
Staggered start as a positive is just one of several ways people will shrug off and rationalize the corporate greed and continue to ignore Blizzard’s increasingly anti-consumer business practices.
Diablo Immortal was the most hideous example of what the company is willing to do.
They ruined OW2 with a garbage business model.
D4 is going to have yearly paid expansions instead of regular content patches of likely the same size.
The 3 expansions in WoW are also likely content-lite for the same price as previous expansions.
and they want $25 extra for a 3 day head-start.
I bought the epic because it interested me in other ways. The middle package is essentially fluff.
But as they said, the competition does this and it hasn’t hurt sales, so unless it hinders theirs, it’ll likely become the standard.
I got the epic edition for the collectibles and the added game time, same reason I’ve bought most collectors editions when I could. The added in beta access is interesting to me as well because I slept on Torghast and it launched wrong, I want to do my best to make sure Delves are something worth continuing to play for.
I could care less about having access 3 days before others. All I’ll be doing is beta testing some more on a live server for the people that waited XD
I’ve been in lots of WoW betas, you really don’t have as much impact as you’d hope.
I was also in D4 betas and all the feedback they got after launch was the same feedback we gave them months before launch.
Stuff launches the way it launches and they don’t act on feedback quickly. Some stuff they fix a year into an expansion is stuff people had commented on in betas.
Then don’t, I mean what’s with the rest of the fluff?
This is why i get epic packs, well or any pack tbh… I hardly ever get epic packs unless i like the “in game” things in it. Usually I just end up getting the Middle pack just enough to get the mount. There have been many of basic box buys though cause me not really caring what was in the bigger packs. One of my friends always gets the CEs though, I wish they had better options for people like that instead of having to pay twice the price in exchange for some blizzard balance later. 
I’ve also been in nearly every beta since WoD. I feel like I do. It’d be nice to have access on day 1 though.