MMO Gaming

As promised, here it is, pictures and all. I apologize upfront for the picture quality, I was fairly cold and my hands were a bit shaky, but it’s really just to show the length of the line, which I think the pictures do.

These first pictures are just to show the length of the line. I couldn’t get the whole thing in one shot so I grabbed a couple of chunks. This represents about half of the line. It stretched from the EB Games door down past Modell’s in one direction (about 2 stores down) and quite far in the other direction as well (there were 2 lines, one for pre-paid from the mall and the other for walk-ins and pre-paid from that particular store.) It was pretty cool seeing so many people lined up, and hearing the conversations going on, about what people were going to do, what they expected, etc. it was a good time.

This last picture is from inside the store, a part of their big Burning Crusade/World of Warcraft display. I thought it was cool so I had to get a shot of it.

But, what was my story that I wanted to tell? Well, I’ll add it at the end, but I will say I think it goes pretty well with what BB wrote over at sister-site 1P Start about EB Games/Gamestop screwing over customers. To read my experience, check out the rest of the entry.

Now, on to my story of incredible stupidity by employees of EB Games. My brother and I went to pick up our copies together. I had put them both under my name when I pre-ordered them and still had the receipts to make everything painless so it should have been a simple matter of getting into the store, grabbing our 2 boxes, and leaving. We waited in line for over an hour, well over an hour in fact and watched as the walk-in line got to go in before us (which seemed rather silly because they had to open up the register for that and it would have been easier to let everyone who already paid for everything to walk in and out and then get the bums who hadn’t, but that’s just me, and I’m crazy.)

After waiting for a time as they let ten or so people in the store at any one time our chance to head in finally came. I handed one of the receipts to my brother and clutched the other one in my frozen fingers. The line moved painfully slow inside the store and then, finally, my brother was next and he hands over the receipt. The employee checks it quickly, looks down into the box filled with games, and pulls out his copy, sending him hovering a few feet away to wait for me. I walk up to the table where the employees are waiting and hand over my receipt. The employee looks at it and tells me I didn’t pay for the game fully, so they didn’t have my copy. For a moment I stand in stunned silence. I fully pre-paid for both games, the employees asked me when I pre-ordered them if I wanted to pay everything up front and I clearly said yes and was charged as such.

I try telling the employee this. She says she didn’t bring that copy with her from the mall because it wasn’t fully paid. I ask her why I would fully pay for one copy and leave $2.33 left to pay on the other copy (yes, I had paid everything but the tax according to her, this is why I knew it was a load of crap and they had messed up). She again says that I didn’t pay. I ask her why I would pay $39.99, the full price of the game, as my down-payment and leave just the tax off for me to pay at a later date. She has no answer and reverts back to “it’s not fully paid.” She gets an idea then, trying to pull one over on me just in case I am as complete a moron as she is. She says when I pre-ordered it might have been punched in wrong and I actually owe the $39.99, I paid the $2.33 to them and the receipt was printed out with wrong information. I stand again for a second, baffled by the sheer idiocy she is trying to make me believe. I remind her that it is their policy that I must put down at least $5 on a game to pre-order it. It would be impossible for me to still owe $39.99. At this point I am under the impression she finally realizes she has no leg to stand on, I’m write and someone from their end screwed things up.

I’m not leaving without my copy of the game. Both her and I are aware of this fact. I drove 45 minutes to get to the store, and there is certainly no way in hell I’m waking up the next morning (or later that morning as it happens) to drive back and get the game then after I “pay” for it. She turns to one of the guys who normally works at that store (she is from the mall, where I pre-ordered it) and asks if they have any other copies left. They do and she says I can take one of theirs, filled with attitude, as if she is doing me a favor by giving me the product I paid for (she was obviously angry when I applied a little logic to the situation and stopped the idiot train from running off the tracks.) I walked up to the front, grabbed my copy of the game from the other employee and head out game in hand. At this point I’m switching between overwhelming joy at having the game and seething anger at the load of garbage that was attempted to be put on me. Of course, when I got back to my house and installed the game, all was good again.

That’s my story, of my launch experience and my stupid EB Games story all wrapped up into one.

EB Games, Gamestop, stupidity, burning crusade, world of warcraft, launch day