So the pre-orders for Guild Wars 2 will open on April 10th. So soon that I can almost smell the Charr fur of my first character. GW2 is coming in three main version, two digital and one Collector’s Edition. Doubtless a disc edition will be available through retailers like amazon, closer to the date.

Digital Edition Standard

This version comes with:

  • The game (you’d kinda hope)
  • 3 days of headstart (seems kinda….short, to me.)
  • Access to beta events
  • Hero’s Band (an item that gives pluses to various character stats)

Digital Deluxe Edition

All of the above plus

  • Summon Mistfire Wolf Elite Skill (A pet that can be summoned for battle)
  • Rytlock Miniature (A companion pet)
  • Golem Banker (This only lasts 5 days)
  • Chalice of Glory (A boost to your initial PvP)
  • Tome of Influence (A boost to a guild of your choosing)

Collector’s Edition

Everything in the Digital and Digital Deluxe editions plus
  • 10-inch figurine of Rytlock (This does look extremely awesome)
  • 112 page Making of Guild Wars 2 book (The art associated with this game is stunning)
  • Custom Art Frame (Er, yay?)
  • Art Portfolio and Five Art Prints (See above comment about stunning art.)
  • Best of Guild Wars 2 Soundtrack CD (Music is always good.)

And a whopping price

We don’t know the pricing scheme for the digital editions, but the CE price tag in the UK currently stands at a whopping £130. Ouch. That’s the sort of pricing that stopped me going for the Star Wars: The Old Republic CE, another highly priced premium item. It’s a little worrying that this is going to be seen as the new standard for Collector’s Editions in the MMO industry, especially when Warcraft CE’s have been of reasonably good quality and also managed to be reasonably affordable.

Is it worth the money?

I’m not sure that the digital boosts are worth it – the Golem Banker would be be worth the money if it wasn’t only for 5 days, in my opinion. These digital bonuses are designed to boost only the early levels of play, rather than enhance your experience in the long term (which is fair enough given the aversion to F2P business models that ArenaNet seem to have.) The Mistfire Wolf, well I can’t see that it would very powerful in the long run.

The figurine, art prints, book and sound track need to be worth £60 on their own. However unlike other recent MMO releases there is no subscription to pay for once you’ve paid the box price, so in some ways it’s easier to accept a more expensive box price than it would be from World of Warcraft expansions. Or I will keep telling myself that to justify the purchase I know I’m going to end up making. I’ll close my eyes to the fact that Warcraft gets cheaper to ‘purchase’ all the time, as the expansions can be had for less than a tenner depending on the latest offers.

The art and figurine are absolutely beautiful. For me one of the huge draws of Guild Wars 2 has been the aesthetics created by the creative team, as well as a world that seems to have much more depth of lore than many equivalent MMOs.

Digital downloads and early access

As someone living in rural England, the early access for SW:TOR was practically over by the time I had gotten the game downloaded. 3 days seems incredibly short from my perspective, and even for the general populace.