'Mega' bullying results in delay for UK release of Catas E..

Posted by Requiel of GOA on freddyshouse.com

http://forums.freddyshouse.com/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=53619

"Here is the situation. I won't name the company involved but will
instead refer to them with the pseudonym 'Mega'.

We told the distributor we wanted to release the expansion on March 25.
For technical and business reasons the patch has to go live this week.
Somewhere along the line 'Mega' weighed in and said that they weren't
prepared to add another title to their March list and they'd only touch
the game if it was released in April. As our distributors do a lot of
trade with 'Mega', they agreed so as not to upset a very large customer
and told all the other retailers that the release date was now April 15th
for a simultaneous launch of the expansion and the complete box.

After a lot of 'phoning people we came to the following compromise which
keeps us, 'Mega' and the distributors happy. 'Mega' is prepared to
release on the 1st April so officially the UK retail release date is
then. However we are sending stocks to all UK retailers this week (at the
same time as for other European retailers). We know that most of them
will sell stock as soon as they recieve it rather than wait for release
dates so we know that UK players won't be at a disadvantage. 'Mega'
'wins' it's fight to move the release to April, UK players can get the
game for patch day and our distributors don't have to deal with losing
'Mega' as a client.

This is why any site you go to will have a release date of the 1st April
or later. However shipment of stock happened today, so as soon as
retailers recieve their boxes they will be sending it out. As far as we
are concerned the release date is still the 24th March. There has been a
considerable amount of effort put in place to ensure that UK players have
the opportunity to buy the game at the same time as gamers on the
continent and we are confident that this will be the case."

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 14:44:47 -0000, Mal Franks <spampit.RemoveThis@btinternet.com>
wrote:

>Posted by Requiel of GOA on freddyshouse.com
> [...]
>This is why any site you go to will have a release date of the 1st April
>or later. However shipment of stock happened today, so as soon as
>retailers recieve their boxes they will be sending it out. As far as we
>are concerned the release date is still the 24th March.

That didn't turn out quite as expected..
Game flexed some legal muscle to ensure people would adhere to the April
1st release date, and then (according to some) proceeded to sell their
initial stock of the game before April 1st themselves.

GOA arranged something with DLGamer.com where you could receive a CD key
and download the game, but their download servers were quickly
overloaded. If you know how you can just patch your TOA client to
Catacombs using the GOA patchers, but now Catacombs is on pre-order as
well at DLGamer.com for whatever reason.

The first level 50 Catacombs class (Warlock) appeared friday afternoon
on Lyonesse (German server), a few hours later he had his artifacts at
level 10 as they did several artifact encounters on a precreated level 5
Mystic. Appararently not all encounters have a level requirement

--

Thorarin
Tiwaz's Emissaries GM and Webmaster (http://www.tiwaz.org/)
European Eye & Ear team (Excalibur Midgard)

Midgard Excalibur:
Thorarin, 50 Thane, ML10 Battlemaster (1165 AC)
Jydan, 50 Healer Isen Herra, ML10 Perfecter
Thorunn, 50 Shaman buffbot, ML10 Perfecter
Tordek, Warrior 50, ML10 Battlemaster
Mona VolFruit, Shadowblade 50, ML3 Spymaster