Pre-ordering is a benefit not for the buyer...

[Varjostin]

Endoperez said:

Varjostin, have you tried out DomII at all? You might want to adjust a little to the user interface, because the change from Dom:PPP to DomII was much bigger than it seems to be from DomII to Dom!!!.

Well, I have played the demo and the whole game at a friend, but I couldn't convince my parents again to lend me their credit card back then, because they (or my mother) became aware of the so-called dangers of e-buying. Yeah, it's the policy of my family. Since I now have a Visa Electron I was able to buy Dom III and I thought it's not worth of buying Dom II this late.

I have looked at the screenshots and feature lists and they look awesome. I can't wait to get my copy of the game. I presume it's published in June, right?

[Nerfix]

Varjostin said:Well, I have played the demo and the whole game at a friend, but I couldn't convince my parents again to lend me their credit card back then, because they (or my mother) became aware of the so-called dangers of e-buying. Yeah, it's the policy of my family. Since I now have a Visa Electron I was able to buy Dom III and I thought it's not worth of buying Dom II this late.

Goodnes, a fellow finn with same problem as I have.

Except my VE can't order stuff abroad.

[atul]

Endoperez said:
A-ha! Another Finn joins our merry group of addicted gamers.

We are a legion.

:>

I'm too part of the group disagreeing about the claimed expensiveness of Dom3, recently bought Dragon Quest 8 (I think) for 62 €, and after 30 hours of playing it's starting to get old (good game, nevertheless). Compare that to the <50 € price of Dom3 and if the hours wasted to Dom2 are of any indication...

Anyway, people complaining about the inability to get Dom3 due to lack of credit card: there's still the payment options of Mail-in-check and Mail-in-money. It takes a bit of paperwork and extra money, but it can be done. Just ask from your local bank. I did it with Dom2 and it worked.

[Nerfix]

atul said:Anyway, people complaining about the inability to get Dom3 due to lack of credit card: there's still the payment options of Mail-in-check and Mail-in-money. It takes a bit of paperwork and extra money, but it can be done. Just ask from your local bank. I did it with Dom2 and it worked.

Can 17 year olds do this, how much paperwork, how much extra money?

[NTJedi]

Argitoth said:
LOL!!! I just realized. I can't buy Dominions III because by the time it's released I'll be gone, away! Never to return! Actually, just for a year.

Zero entertainment for a year... either you are joining one of those reality TV shows, some unknown cult, or you're trying to bore yourself to death. Just kidding.

Argitoth said:
But why does GamersFront give us ZERO benefit for pre-ordering? Anyone knows that a good publisher will throw in SOMETHING! Was it Ultima Online or EverQuest that gave you cloth maps for pre-ordering? That's really stupid that GamersFront is completely ignoring the buyer.

Well before May_20th the preorder benefit was financial... saving the consumer $7.00 in cost. So financially it was better to pre_order before May_20th.

Actually if Shrapnel wanted they could release a "Collectors Edition" of Dominions_3. The collectors edition could include 3 unique items to lure the true fans. First a small paper manual providing hints & history otherwise not available. Second could be a figure of the angel in DOM_3 which is to rival the demonlords. having a holy symbol in the box should help. And third and most important is that anyone which purchased a collectors edition could attend a private online 1_hour chat with the Illwinter developers. This chat would be setup where the developers would choose to only answer the questions they wish. All questions would have to be PM to someone which sorts and passes the civilized questions to Illwinter.
--made a topic for this:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...&Number=426312

Argitoth said:
GamersFront is basically saying, "Let the buyers pre-order 2 to 3 months before the game is released, we don't care if we are out of stock, we don't care if the price is high, oh no. Lets ignore the buyer and give them NOTHING for helping us. No reduced price, no store credit, no special mouse pad, no cloth maps... Let's not give anything to our fans."

Anyone which pre-orders the game won't be on the 'out of stock' list because they manufacture the CDs, books and game box in bulk. Shrapnel will examine the total pre-order requests and match the demand for shipping before the game is released.
The TRUE benefit of pre-ordering was before May_20th which I mentioned earlier. The only benefit of pre-ordering now is not being placed on some waiting list if the game becomes a huge success. Ideally the game should still have a $2.oo discount to encourage more pre-orders.

I won't be able to take part in the Doms3 community.

We'll be here when you finish your year vacation which has zero entertainment. And one benefit you can look forward to upon returning is that your first game will have an official patch making it more stable and balanced.

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually most of the special set could be offered by any of us I think. How about a CD full of mods, and maps, and all of the units as icons, and the tutorial game, turoial map example, tutorial mod, some started games, some pre-made gods, a manual. Plus you can throw in a nice tshirt, mug, and a bumpersticker.
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/sell?pid=2837642

Gandalf Parker

[PDF]

Well, overall Dom3 is rather expensive : 55$ plus postage (5$ for me in France) is clearly above average, for a "small budget" game. Not even counting possible VAT making it increase to 70$ !
I don't have any problem with that though, since Dom2 alone had for me 1000hr+ lifespan !
And I understand that Shrapnel and Illwinter wants to do some money with it. The only other solution good for developers and customers and allowing to lower prices is to distribute through download only, but that's not the way they did it.

[DominionsFan]

PDF said:
Well, overall Dom3 is rather expensive : 55$ plus postage (5$ for me in France) is clearly above average, for a "small budget" game. Not even counting possible VAT making it increase to 70$ !
I don't have any problem with that though, since Dom2 alone had for me 1000hr+ lifespan !
And I understand that Shrapnel and Illwinter wants to do some money with it. The only other solution good for developers and customers and allowing to lower prices is to distribute through download only, but that's not the way they did it.

Well yes...but like I said, the question is, what is the best way for Shrapnel and Illwinter to gain more money?

Example:
1. The retail price of the game is 45 euro. -> More people gonna buy the game probably.
2. The retail price of the game is 55 euro. -> Less people gonna buy it probably.

Frankly...I have no idea which one is better for the devs. All I know is that the price of the game gonna scare away xy number of players...it wont scare away "potential" costumers for sure however.

[Gandalf Parker]

Do you really think so?
I wish them well and all. I think its a great game. But I think the market for this game is measureable. Im not sure if the difference in the number of people who will/wont purchase based on that price change is enough to cover making the change.

Especially with the "bill rule". That people tend to base their purchase decisions based in sizes of bills. In the US thats 5, 10, 20, 50. Once it crosses from one denomination size to the next then everything in between is pretty much the same in the mind of most buyers. (the bill rule is also why you see so many things priced at 19.99 or 4.99)

Gandalf Parker

[Varjostin]

PDF said:
Well, overall Dom3 is rather expensive : 55$ plus postage (5$ for me in France) is clearly above average, for a "small budget" game. Not even counting possible VAT making it increase to 70$ !

Here in Finland an average game bought from a game store costs over 50 euros. I don't know about France. So would you tell me how much an average game costs there? Damn, after long browsing ah-so-lovely wikipedia page for VAT and the pages of the Customs Service, I have to say you are getting it right. According to the Customs Service I have to pay 22% or 17% of VAT (Value added tax) and a customs duty of a small sum, because the product comes from the U.S. This is of course in Finland.

It has to be remembered, though, that this tariff-jargon is a very complex thing to master and it's possible that no tax is being collected from a game. In any case every european buyer of Dom 3 should probably take the suggested 70$ and multiply it with the current exchange rate between euro and dollar, which is today 0.7203, when changing dollars to euros. This results 50.421, with which I presume you had came up too. The price is still the price of an average game in FINLAND. It's the final price rounded up (70 $) with tariffs and taxes counted with. So the information for the average prices in other countries is needed.

I'm sorry if I sound too argumentative or just micromanage too much. It's my style.