Guild Wars 2

I’m having a very frustrating problem. In April I purchased the Pre-Purchase CE from an official ANet partner in the Netherlands (Bol.com). I received my initial registration key with no problem, played in the Beta, started on the first day of the head start and played just fine during the “grace” period.

On the 27th Bol notified me by e-mail that they were shipping my CE to the PostNL delivery service and they gave me a track and trace code to track shipment. It was stated to be delivered to me on the 28th. Each morning the delivery date was pushed back a day. According to Bol.com policy I should allow up to three working days after receiving the shipping notification to have the package arrive. It didn’t, so on Friday I contacted them. On Saturday morning the delivery date was set to unknown and Bol.com told me in the evening to “be patient” (while I waited for the three days) and contact them again if I hadn’t received anything on Monday 3rd. Nothing came, delivery status was unknown. Bol replied the next day that they consider my package lost and don’t think it will ever turn up or be delivered and the refund process was started. I contacted PostNL that same morning. They called me within the hour and informed me that they only had received a notification from Bol that a package was going to be handed over to them but it never arrived according to their logs. As the recipient, they can’t do anything for me, only Bol could try something, but they already have given up on it.

So now I sit with my Guild Wars 2 account, with my Pre-purchase AND CE in-game items and my original Guild Wars account linked (50/50 HoM points) and I can’t use it anymore. It appears that GameMania still has regular CE’s in stock (Bol doesn’t offer them and you might understand that I’m not very keen ordering something big there in the near future). My question is…could I buy a regular CE and apply that serial code to my current account and start playing again with my account? Or does my account expect a special serial code belonging to a PP CE? If the latter is the case, can something be done? I don’t want to loose my account. I had paid for the pre-purchase CE because I wanted the whole set of extra things. Not to mention all my HoM achievements are there.

EDIT: I first contacted support about this on Saturday 1st when I started fearing it would turn out into this (but still hoping my package was only being delayed and asking if it were possible to extent the “grace” period). I haven’t received any answer so far. I updated my status with the news of yesterday. But I realise support is swamped and I’m having some time-critical things…if I can go out and buy a new CE, I want to do that ASAP because I fear soon they will be unavailable, or only for outrageous prices on Ebay (and I’m not keen on buying it over the Internet anymore).

I wold also be interested in an answer to this question.

The CE key is a CE key so you should be fine. If this works like every other MMO the preorder/prepurchase key doesn’t matter you could of prepurchased a CE then gotten a refund and applied a regular key and the account would work you’d just lose the CE items.

Hmm, I hope you are right Drintar. I’m still a bit hesitant. But with each passing day my fingers are getting more and more itchy.

Well see the account doesn’t have any way to know the key you are getting is a pre purchase you are just getting a retail box key and applying that to the existing account so like I said you should be golden

It does make sense. I just wasn’t sure if ANet maybe had a special batch of retail keys and shipped those out with boxes reserved for pre-purchase orders. I guess I’m going to try my luck…lets hope Game Mania still has the CE. After the pre-purchase of GW2 (only one per store and that went to people who placed vague pre-orders years ago, without knowing there would be something like a pre-purchase in the future) and botched Diablo III release (they didn’t even have enough copies on launch day for the people who reserved a copy, let alone for customers who just walked into the story an hour after opening) I swore not to buy there again, but sometimes you have to act against principle.

I’d very much like to see a satisfactory resolution in the customers favor to this situation.

The man has paid his money for all the bells and whistles offered and patiently waited for word of resolution,and dare I say actually jumped through hoops to get some sort of resolotuin in a timely manner.Fogeltje shouldn’t have to pay an extra cent to obtain what he already paid for.

Stick to your guns Fogeltje,do NOT purchase another copy of this game (I know you want to play mate).

Was a time when it was considered an honor to have customers,rather than an honor to be a customer.

Thanks for the moral support Temper (and all others!), it’s greatly appreciated. I hadn’t expected any reply to my support ticket since support is swamped with his hack issue and other stuff (just looking at the forum here is indication enough for that), but I hoped I could get a quick answer to an ultimately relatively simple question (in my eyes) here on the forums, sadly they are as swamped as support probably is. While I’m inclined to think that Drintar is right (it makes absolutely 100% sense, but being Dutch means I’m naturally suspicious of everything…even more of postal service workers after this) I would like to have a definitive answer. I can’t just walk to a GameMania store whenever I want as they don’t have one in town. Oh well, we’ll see. Eventually I’ll just stop caring, but I could have saved myself all that time spent on Guild Wars grinding that HoM and spent that time productively, like finishing my degree, hehe.

I feel very bad for my guild as I offered to act as Guild Leader to get our guild back off the ground and now they are stuck with a Guild Leader who can’t do anything (luckily we have some wonderful people who could take over for me, thankfully I was smart enough to promote them when I saw this coming) but it still leaves me with an exceptionally bitter taste in my mouth (which is totally unrelated to the cold coffee in my mug right now).

In case supports gets around to read this anyway, I’ll restate the question in the most abbreviated form I can manage: I pre-purchased, everything went fine during beta and headstart. But the retailer (an official A-Net partner for NL in pre-purchasing: Bol.com) lost the package during transport to the package delivery service. Both claim it irretrievably lost and Bol is refunding me. Can I buy a CE in a store (if I can still get one) and use that serial code to play again with my existing account (linked to my GW1 HoM), enjoying my pre-purchase bonuses and stuff? Drintar makes a strong case for “yes”, but a definitive answer would put my nerves at ease before I respend the 150 bucks Bol is refunding me.

You should be just fine. As long as you register any retail key for your region (even then I’m not sure if keys are region locked) you should be able to continue. The type will determine if you get CE goodies or not.

I’m not too worried about the CE goodies, it’s my the pre-purchase I was really worried about. But I guess Drintar was already right saying that there are no ‘special keys’ that expect an existing beta key in place. The pre-purchase key IS on my account and if I enter a CE retail code, I should be fine with the CE goodies as well.

The reason I wonder is that I thought that A-Net might have built in some protection for people who pre-purchase the CE, then cancel their order when head start begins, get their money back and then buy a SE. Pre-purchase and CE in-game goodies would be on the account already (as I already had Rytlock and the other in-game stuff) and people would essentially have a Digital Deluxe Edition for the price of a SE.

(If A-Net thinks I’m on that tour then I can produce my correspondence with Bol.com showing my stuff was lost…besides, I still WANT that CE, I’m really looking forward to what the box holds).

The Rytlock statue puts Darth Malgus to shame.

Heh. Strangely the statue is not the thing I was looking most forward to. I’m really not a fan of the Charr. I hated every second playing in the Charr baby area during beta…killing Ascalonian ghosts, even ghosts of NPCs that I met in GW1 But he does look awesome on the photo’s I’ve seen, I have to admit that. Once I get a box, I’ll have to solve a first world problem: where to keep the statue (and box)

Fogeltje.2341:

Heh. Strangely the statue is not the thing I was looking most forward to. I’m really not a fan of the Charr. I hated every second playing in the Charr baby area during beta…killing Ascalonian ghosts, even ghosts of NPCs that I met in GW1 But he does look awesome on the photo’s I’ve seen, I have to admit that. Once I get a box, I’ll have to solve a first world problem: where to keep the statue (and box)

If you can, do see about ordering a copy of the OST. While I’m disappointed that the CE only has a sampler, the soundtrack is just that good. The artwork is great, as is the tin. The artbook is great too with some interesting little tidbits.

Yes, someone in my guild already teased me and others with that. It’s on my list. But I’m not buying GW2 goodies until I’m back in the game. There’s also some kind of art book on sale on the website which is different from the book in the box. I’m contemplating that also (but also with the same annotation that I won’t buy anything until I’m slaughtering centaurs by the dozens again).

Well, the listing of the game on GameMania’s website was a mistake. It’s sold out. Went to two more game shops (and found out the fourth I wanted to visit forfeited business a year and a half ago). It seems that the CE is very nearly sold out. Getting a copy through a store is probably impossible and I doubt ANet releases more. I’m not going to buy for rip-off prices on ebay or amazon. So I guess after seven days of having enormous fun during head start and grace period it’s time to say goodbye to the game I had looked forward to so much and loved so much in that short time. I had already made a shopping list for the OST, the Art book, the LE strategy guide and future gem purchase (to upgrade vault, bag slots on main character, character slots etc). Oh well, guess I’ll save myself a lot of money this way.

I decided it’s the CE or nothing at all, so it will be nothing I fear. In fact, I think I couldn’t even add a SE retail code to my account since I have my CE in-game items on my account already. And I’m not buying Deluxe Edition as that edition is not worth the money to me. The in-game itself never warranted the price for me. I was willing to buy the more expensive CE because I wanted the physical goodies.

Thanks for the response. Sadly it turned out the CE wasn’t available any more at the place where I saw it, it was a mistake on their behalf. So there’s no game for me. However, I if do manage to get one after all, I know I can use with my pre-purchase account.