Blizzard makes a lot more money off of retail sales that it makes off of downloads. Its all about the money folks. Why would I, as a retailer carry a product if the manufacturer was going to be in direct competition with me. Blizzard knows this. Downloads will have to wait.

I'm all for Digital Downloads of software.... after the product has been released and has been available for a while. Offering digital download on day 1 does equal decreased sales for brick and morter stores. And while that may not seem like such a big deal on the surface, it is a big deal in the long run. Brick and morter stores already face a great deal of competition from the internet in the form of Amazon and (to a greater or lesser extent) eBay. No brick and morter store can offer the inventory selection of Amazon... nor can they offer the convienence of one-click shopping that all internet retail outlets offer. That's not the fault of the brick and morter stores... that's just the nature of the beast.

But let's be realistic for a moment, shall we?

If Blizzard did offer digital download of WotLK on release day, what do you think is going to happen? While I'm no expert on the topic... I'm pretty sure you'll see a massive influx of downloading going on, which will put a massive strain not only on Blizzard's download servers, but also the hard lines that connect those servers to the internet. That in turn will result in a great deal of instability for those people playing WoW (due to the increased traffic on the hard lines from the download servers).

And while I'm sure at least one person will post something along the lines of "Well there hasn't been any problems with doing digital download for TBC so STFU noob!", I'm positive that when Blizzard did put TBC up for digital download 3-6 months after it's initial release, most of the people with active subscriptions had already upgraded to TBC and therefore the demand for the expansion was limited to a much smaller percentage of subscribers, which translated into less of a strain on the download servers and the hard lines.

Over 11 million active subscriptions for WoW right now. Think about that for a moment. If only 10% of that number opted to purchase WotLK via digital download on November 13th, that'd be 1.1 million people downloading a set of files that's anywhere from 4-6 GB's (I wasn't in the beta so I don't know for sure the actual size). Initially, those 1.1 million people would be starting their download taking data from the Blizzard seeders and then taking data from user seeders as the download process progressed... which would help a bit... but not by much.

Let's not even mention the possible effects of doing a digital download on release day would have on www.worldofwarcraft.com and the registration server(s) that everyone will be accessing anyway to upgrade their subscriptions to WotLK. There will probably be enough issues with the website and registration server(s) as is without factoring digital download into the mix.

So in the end... go pick up your copy of the expansion... either from Amazon, ebgames, or a brick and morter store. I'm sure we'll all be more than happy to sacrifice the supposed convienence of digital download on day one if it means avoiding adding even more problems and issues to a week that is probably already going to be riddled with problems, issues, server instabilities, emergency patches, zone overcrowding, etc.

This simply an example of poor marketing. Mertox made the statement that this will help stores and that we should automatically seek to help them. This is flawed, stores are there to give us a reason to use them, not there for us to feel that we need to use them. This entire concept of not releasing something digitally because it would hurt the ability for brick and mortar stores to bring in business is absurd. It's the responsibility of the locations to drum up their own business. What these stores should be doing is striking a deal with Blizzard that the can have promotional give aways at the launches, limited edition hard copy specific bonuses, etc. Give people incentive to actually buy a hard copy of the game and to come into the store. By restricting the ways people have to get a product in an attempt to force you down a purchasing channel you don't want, it simply aggravates that customer.

Blizzard dropped the ball on this one. I'm sure in Marketing 101 they covered the basics, but you still need to think outside the box. Even something as simple as giving people a potential to receive a free upgrade to the collectors edition for coming into the stores, or having kiosks setup with some kind of sneak peek footage from DIII would be more than enough to get most people into the stores. Personally, I would have gone to the store without issue to get a collectors edition if it were not online, because it makes sense. I am purchasing something that has bonus materials that I must physically collect. However, in the cases of people who just want to play, they should be just as catered to. There is no good reason I shouldn't be able to just log into the account information on World of Warcraft website, click "upgrade", pay my tab, and have the game downloaded to my machine.

I purchased online AND pre-ordered from GameStop (yes, I have multiple copies).
One of those copies is for somebody out of state.
Without a digital upgrade available, this person will need to wait several more days to even be able to update to WotLK, if I understand correctly...even though I planned on giving them the license key over the phone.

I know we're not the only ones in this situation.
I suppose it helps make sure that Northrend isn't overloaded from the start.

And Seculartwo, I feel yah there. I pre-ordered from a store that I'll have to take public transit to, about an hour away. Pondering if I want to go through downtown Oakland, CA at Midnight and stand around waiting for a bus.

I'm really curious how they go about doing this. Considering software is typically pressed to CD at a certain point in the program's life...and it takes time to press and package all those CDs...I would imagine that even once we "install the update / upgrade our accounts to WotLK", we'll probably STILL need to download and install updates on top of that.

-T.

While I support digital downloads and have purchased a handful of games with them, with the economy what it is today, I think it is appropriate to just release it through stores and give support to the gaming stores we love and help their profits. Granted it is just one game, but many games are being digitally downloaded now and places like Gamestop will feel it. It is getting harder and harder to find PC games in these places at it is.