"Do you have any copies of Neverwinter Nights?"

"Yes and no. Yes we do but they've all been preordered."

"Oh, so since I preordered it you're holding onto one for me?"

"Yes we are."

"OK Thanks"

Score! Best Buy rocks! (today)

 
12:19 PM
Best Buy is still telling me that NWN won't be out until tommorow. Either the guy on the phone just wants to get rid of me (so I won't call back on his shift) or they actually have the game in the back room and are sitting on it. Neither would surprise me. If it weren't for the fact that I preordered and I have a nice coupon with them, I would so head off to Babbage's.

Of course, it doesn't take any time for bug reports to filter in. One thread I read said it runs like a dog on his system, a system which "meets all the requirements - except video card", which is akin to having a car that "meets all of the road requirements - except for wheels". Others are complaining about random crashes - and inevitably they're running a rare piece of hardware or have old drivers, etc. If Bioware patches the game then they're seen as having put out an incomplete game rushed to market. Of course the bugs probably only occur on a configuration they've never seen before, so they were supposed to fix those bugs they had no way of knowing were there. And if they throw up their hands and say "it's the hardware makers fault" then they're seen as irresponsible for not fixing the bug that's not their fault.

Of course if, when I get the game, it won't run or it crashes I'll probably change my tune completely...

I wonder how often I should pester Best Buy...

June 18, 2002

 
11:17 PM
Still no NWN. Something odd I've noticed about people with this game though. A number of people won't buy it because it's $59.99. I have a 30% off coupon for Best Buy and I think it won't be full rpice day one, so it's less of an issue, but some people refuse to pay more than $40-$50 for a game. Others claim "this game sucks!" or "this game kicks ass!" right before or after they indicate that they don't own the game yet. Remember - there haven't been any reviews of this game yet, so people are mostly "rating" their game based on their affection for the genre or based off of previews. The most interesting however is the sheer number of people who refuse to buy the game until it gets a patch or two. No one has had the game long enough to have huge issues but yet the public is so distrustful by and large of 1.0 releases that they'll stay away until the inevitable patch, especially for games where the "day one patch" is a custom.

Oh well, perhaps tommorow...

 
4:10 PM
Yeah. So, I called Best Buy at 11:30 and they said they didn't have Neverwinter Nights in, but that they would have it "soon". K, so there went my lunchtime plans. Just as well, though - shit blew up here shortly after and it took until now to sort it all out. I'm going to call Best Buy again at 4:30 and see if they have it yet - I'll pick it up on the way home. Failing that I'll call at 8:30 since they close at 9.

I started to wonder if I was being a little too obsessive with this game but then I noticed GameSpy, whose website color is mostly green, went purple for the day in honor of NWN.

 
6:50 AM
OK, I meant to post again yesterday but it just didn't happen. In any event, no Neverwinter Nights yesterday.

The Neverwinter Nights Forums have these special forums where you can only post if you have the game - it verifies this based off of your CD Key. Yesterday someone posted at about midnight - they were the first one to get the game. I think they're in Israel, which is (I think) ahead of us, time-wise. In any event, it will be interesting to see if the thing gets to stores today. Apparently Best Buy's policy (as per BB employees on message boards) is to put the thing out for purchase when it comes in, not to wait for any specific date. Also depending on whom you talk to the game "ships" today, meaning that it probably won't be "in stores" until tommorow. Of course if BB puts these things out as soon as they get them then if they get the game at 4 PM then it might be on shelves at 5 PM. My Wife works until 9 PM tonight so if the game came out today I could come home and play it and not be ingoring her.

Of course I also realize that it's not that big of a deal that it gets in stores today. This game isn't the Second Coming like some make it out to be and its not like I haven't salivated over games before and then largely ignored them when they came out. Still, I'm interested to see how reviews of this one pan out - I keep hitting the game sites regularly. It's kinda like Episode II - I'm so excitied about this game my biggest fear is to read bad reviews of it, even though I realize its the gamers, not the critics, that matter. At least when a PC Game is reviewed it's by someone like you - when a movie is reviewed it's done by some stuffy old fart who hates it when the movie has little in common with artsy-fartsy stuff like The Remains of the Day.

June 17, 2002

 
9:04 AM
Hoo boy it's been a while since I posted here, eh? Oh well, been busy as usual - must have been since I got a promotion/raise recently. Now I'll quit bitching about being broke so much.

In any event, I've preordered Neverwinter Nights at Best Buy. Yeah, I know I said I'd never shop there again. Yes, I know at one point I had "scruples" when it came to where I shopped. I believed that you bought your comic books at a comic book store, your video games at a video game store, etc. You didn't buy all your stuff at Wal-Mart, you supported the "little guys". Of course, since Babbage's, the local video game store is owned by a gigantic corporation (Barnes & Noble) that's less of an issue. Since I rarely buy comic books, I don't know where I'd buy them if I did though I would probably head on down to the local comic shop. However the real issue is that I used to think that before I had to work for a living. Now that the money I'm spending on this I worked for myself and I have to weigh it against other factors (like food) my ideals have changed. Now I'm up for the lowest bidder. In a recent PC Gamer there was a 20% off coupon for Best Buy, so it winds up being the cheapest deal in town, despite being $5 more expensive than other places in town. Plus Best Buy had a deal where for $10 you bought a pre-order box with the Aurora toolkit on CD (beta version as it turns out), a poster and an "exclusive adventure" to download after June 20th (which will be posted to the web within minutes I'm sure).

So now I'm stoked - it's been a while since I bought a game as soon as it came out. Of course, I don't have anything to base it on - the game hasn't been reviewed yet (though Gamespot has given it positive first impressions) so I'm buying it more or less based off of previews (2 years' worth).

I think I'll post frequently this week as to my status with the game.

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