Really would like an answer on this too. I have put down a deposit to preorder the CE and i would really like to get that pet without essentially having to pay twice
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In the past, they have dealt with this by setting a date for the game key to be added to the Bnet account. If added by X date it counts for the pre-purchase bonus.
Example cited is D3 Reaper of Souls expansion (2014).
There were several bonuses and some cross game rewards. Here is the key text of the arrangement.
If you’ve already digitally pre-purchased the Reaper of Souls expansion, either as the standard edition or the Digital Deluxe Edition, then you’re all set! These bonus items will be granted to your Battle.net account as follows:
- The Wings of Valor will be automatically sent to your existing and any newly created Diablo III characters via an in-game notification starting March 20, 2014.
- Valla the Demon Hunter will be available once Heroes of the Storm has been officially released. Note that Heroes of the Storm is still deep in development and does not have an announced release date, but you can stay tuned to the official game site for future updates. Note also that pre-purchasing Reaper of Souls does not guarantee a spot in the eventual Heroes of the Storm alpha or beta tests.
If you pre-order Reaper of Souls at a retail store—either a physical standard edition or physical Collector’s Edition—be sure to redeem your Reaper of Souls game key via your Battle.net account on or before 11:59 PM PST on March 31, 2014. If you redeem your game key after that date, your pre-order loot will be consumed by the fires of the Burning Hells and lost forever. While you have six days from the time the expansion launches on March 25 to the time you must enter your code, to be safe, you should secure your preorder today and be ready to input your game key on launch day.
I don’t know if Blizzard will do the same for Dragonflight - we need to wait and get clarification, however there is a past model they can use.
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and the rich get richer.
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If they send out activation keys beforehand you could potentially buy up multiple CE’s and sell them off at scalper prices after release still sealed with used up codes. Even selling the activations keys too seperately.
they should just link the purchase to your battle.net account so you get the in game items automatically, then get the physical box at a later date. Problem solved.
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What an awful solution to a very simple problem lol. You’re going to refund someone WoW bucks to buy a digital thing that basically cost no money to make? On top of that 130 dollar CE box? It’s not gonna be me, but someone is going to unsub and never come back due to this.
Not saying there might not be a better way to do it, but in the past I’ve just used the refund money to pay for my next few months of sub, and I’m no further behind financially that way.
I assume anyone willing to pay for the CE is planning on playing for a few months at least…
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This is an absolutely awful “solution” to a very simple issue. Here’s how you should do this:
- Create option to link your Battle.net account to your Blizzard Gear Store account (if you can log in to Wowhead with your Battle.net account, you (Blizzard) can figure out how to allow and link log ins to a Blizzard website with a Blizzard Battle.net account).
- Link the pre-order of the Collector’s Edition to your Battle.net account.
- Warn that linking the Pre-Order to your Battle.net account AND claiming any of the digital means the transaction is non-refundable.
- EVERYONE IS HAPPY.
Or even easier, just give us the ability to link the pre-order purchase to our Battle.net account after the fact.
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sending the code ahead of time is too much to ask, of course. $150 (130 + taxes + shipping!) is not enough money… apparently, you also want an extra $90 on top.
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They don’t even need to spilt it up. They could just provide the code at the end of checkout. This isn’t rocket science and it is 2022. But then they can’t even make it so that their transmog backs work so perhaps putting a digital code on a digital receipt is way beyond their abilities.
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This is my first time ever buying a collector’s edition and highly disappointed in that this is the official “workaround.” There are plenty of ways to rectify this instead of a balance refund, especially since you’re asking those that are spending the most on an xpac to have to spend MORE, in this case about a 1/3rd of the original purchase just to get the in-game content ahead of getting the physical box (even more so since there’s a race/class that will be playable in the pre-patch).
Ion stated back in April that the game development was “quite far along”, and considering launch date is stated for Dec 31, 2022. This means the teams (dev and marketing) have been working on this expansion for awhile.
Collector’s Editions no longer have the physical game. All the digital bonus items you get players already have access to with digital. There is no soundtrack this round. Their main branding has been polished over 2 months ago so things like the mouse pad and pins should already be finished up. Only thing may be the art book, but a lot of the images used are concept which would have been made in earlier stages of the xpacks development.
When they dropped pre-orders they should honestly have CE ready to ship. There is honestly no reason to hold CE till closer to launch anyways. Add the key to the account only turns your account into an account akin to ordering the digital Epic version.
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But could they not do this when it’s a physical copy? I don’t think you have to sign when it’s delivered.
Recently went on sale where? This a GameStop thing or back to Amazon?
makes no sense tbh. sell the CE edition, give a digital code, end of story. when you get the box thats it. don’t even put a code in it.
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That creates a problem where you’d end up having blizzard pay you to play their games. As much as I like that idea, it’s just not a financially sound decision to allow that. If they did, you could farm gold in WoW, use it to buy wow tokens, convert the tokens to blizzbucks and then real bucks. So, in a round about way, they’d be losing money.
Is the soundtrack (digital code) really not included in this collector’s edition? 
I may just go digital for the first time.
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But that doesn’t exactly work like that since there are people out there that WILL cheat the system by attempting to find ways to get their money back by disputing those transactions with their bank saying it wasn’t authorized by them.
My guess is that they don’t do this because they have no way to link the Gear Store to the Battle.net to verify if the order was refunded or not. They have done this in the past and so far it has worked just fine.
Ok. What’s stopping the person from canceling the order and getting a refund or disputing the order with their bank to get those funds back? How exactly is Blizzard going to know that the order was canceled and refunded?
Only other way to do this is if you buy the Physical Copy of the Collectors, you are given 1 code for the digital stuff and then 1 code for the game upgrade which is inside the box. You are given a few days to claim the code from the physical box or else the digital stuff is removed till that code from the physical copy is claimed onto the account.
The problem with doing this is that it can cause mass confusion and having to generate 2 keys instead of just the 1. Then there is a problem where people will obtain the key and sell that key off to someone else, but that person who bought the key would lose that digital stuff because they don’t have the key from the box to claim which then the original person who bought the physical copy to get all that stuff plus the money they made from the person who bought that key.
It’s just a mess of problems waiting to happen honestly and this system works as it makes it so if you are willing to wait till the physical box shows up, you can do that, but if you REALLY need those in game goodies right now, you can purchase the physical copy, then buy the digital version to get those digital stuff right now, then get your money back in Balance which you can use to purchase other stuff on the shop in the future.
They get to squeeze an additional $90 out of the customers by making them buy the expansion twice.
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