Wow says its available now, still waiting on serial tho =(

I thought preorder would let me play the game today. Because its just a download.
(think of steam... pay and play)
Stupid me.
But i can cancel my preorder and order it to get it now, ah no.
But i can bite my ass for a day of senseless waiting at home at a free day, yes i can and i do.

Every other game I pre-order thats been digi-download I have gotten right when it was released. You even said, "The purpose of pre-ordering in this case (if not to access the closed Beta) was to ensure you would get a copy at your own convenience." What is convenient about waiting to get it when other people have gotten it before me that are ordering on release day? Also did you tell us before hand that it would be better to wait till release day if we wanted it right when it comes out? Logic says that you would have pre-orders ready when you release it to everyone else. Why do you think all major retailers have lines for people with reserves/pre-orders? SD messed up and did not do what most other companies would have done.

I'm sorry but I disagree with Frogboys opinion. If you say you pre-order items to fire and forget then why not just forget it entirely and pick the item up or order it when you want. My idea of thinking along with everyone elses who pre-orders online is that you pretty much get it asap. I pre-order games in store so that I can stroll in at 9am and pick the thing up right there with no wait and be first in queue to receive a guaranteed copy. I pre-order off websites such as Amazon so that as soon as it enters the delivery date my copy is first on that mail van and straight to my address. I'm sure alot of people out there agree with me. Im sure even Stardock knows that it would be common sense for those who pre-ordered first and showed dedication to the developers that we should be first in queue.

I just received an email from sales@stardock.com so i'm on my way to get my copy though lol..

lucky you i'm still waiting    

i wish it would at least let you download then activate later before use

god damn it... still 5 more hours or so... hmm i also though that with pre ordering (especially with digital downloads) that we got our copy first. guess i was wrong .

WHERE IS MY GOD DAMN GAME!!

Ahhhhh , moan....

My previous experience was with EA games - you preorder, then can download ~90% of the game before it's released and then get the key + the final 10% the moment it's released. This worked out well for everyone - you could download ahead of time, so the servers didn't get trashed, and you got it 'asap'.

Whereas with Sins, pre-order is worse than useless.

As I pre-ordered last night, I'm guessing that the details won't come through until ~1am UK time???

If I hadn't pre-ordered, then I'd need to spend ~3 minutes doing the purchase and could download tonight.

I'm sure Sins is going to be a great game, but this is just mind-numbingly bad planning.

If Stardock had said up front 'pre-orders will be processed some time after the game is released', does stardock honestly expect that people would have pre-ordered? I sure as hell wouldn't .

Well, I do agree that they really should have processed the orders last nite. But, we all knew that they wouldn't so there is not much left to do but wait. But, no matter how anyone slices it, there really was absolutely NO advantage to pre order if you did not play beta. But, abstinence makes the heart grow fonder. Even though SD kinda did this the wrong way, they could do that a thousand times and still be in the top 95th percentile of great publishers.

what id like to know is how old are the people whining about lack of service.
Here is my question why did you not take the time to order it before the final rush, I did and got my serial the same day in fact me and my brother got our serial the same day AND downloaded the beta 4
That was a week ago everyone knew there would be a last minute rush
and whose to say per orders are more important than the order NOW future just have some patience I’m sure stardock/ironclad and all the techies there are doing the best they can further more id like to see how good a job the people complaining could do in there shoes.

Just my two cents

ps these are my views and my alone and do NOT represent star dock or ironclad in anyway or the people on this forum

ps ps sorry if my post offends anyone or cuses a flame war thats is not its intent

Well I got my Stardock Email a couple of hours ago ... guess what
It said "transaction failed" and no SN - talk about all the exitment going down the toilet.
While them oney is reserved on my Visa Account ... (its not my main) ok no problems Strange ... paypal Works, WoW works SD doesnt. but Oh well I thought Lets Try Tokens its 10 tokkens for 70$ a bargain ...
but first ... lets do some internal cash transfere to my paypal account .. the reseved sum is still locked so not enough cash.
tin tin tin, mhu mhu hum .. whaiting for $ to move from maij acc to visa/paypal acc

30min .. waiting

1h .. still waiting

almoust 2h and stillll waiting

%^&* what the hell is taking so long?

Answer: THE BEST BANK IN LITHUANIA 2006-2007 seems to do all the transactions only at work hours 8am-8pm on work days - even the internal ones ... (do those dummied do it manually ?!?!?!)

DAM. So I guess im stuck untill tomorrow ... i hope banks in Canada dont do transactions only at working hours ...
Anyway Enjoy ppl your game .. an patience for the once that are still waiting I'll hopefully will join you tomorrow.

"Here is my question why did you not take the time to order it before the final rush, I did and got my serial the same day in fact me and my brother got our serial the same day AND downloaded the beta 4"

Speaking personally, I'd heard about Sins before - and already had an account from, but saw a piece on a gaming site yesterday about it, which finally peaked my interest.

So I came to the site, saw the pre-order was still available, fished out my details from a galciv2 that I played ~twice and never liked, and 'went for it'.

Anyway, it's not a 'disaster' - in the long run hardly anyone remembers things like this. (e.g. fallout 2 considered one of the 'greatest RPGs of all time' had such a disastrous launch that the developers shut the forums down...).

I'd really suggest they look at 'pre-downloading' though, as I understand it you save an absolute fortune and don't get into this mess.

In reply to Hawk, I'm 20 years old and as a customer we pay to get the upmost service. Why didn't I pre-order before? Until the latest issue of PC Gamer, it never really appealed to me.

When you goto a concert, you book early to get the best seating. If you leave it sooner you'll be stuck behind a pillar with a crap view. I know that example is a bit extreme but when I want to play Sins of a Solar Empire sooner than the more casual gamer who'll just wait; then my way of thinking was that pre-ordering would let me do so.

I'm having a real moan here and usually I'd let things go but Frogboy's response was a bit immature and not very intelligent so I had to voice my opinion.

Hi there PeterKernohan1987 thanks for the frank honest and candid reply   
I understand your view, frustration and sympathise with you.
however if everyone preorders on the same day a few days before launch there is going to be a delay no mater what infrastructure one has in place and what upsets me is people are starting to see that as bad service when its just sheer overload.
In my limited experience with stardock i have always received good service, and the service we pay for here is that the game devs actually pay attention to our gripes about the game on the forums and also release periodically extra content as well as an assurance, that all the bugs that can be fixed will be fixed I have yet to find service of this level at any other games development company including EA and ubisoft(insert appropriate swear word here) to name but a few.
Furthermore I am sorry you were unable to get your serial strait away and I hope it arrives soon.  
Chances are you’ll be playing before me as my boet used his email in the ordering process and now I have to rectify that before I download the game.  

I guess it's not too surprising that the apologists are making an effort to justify this situation. I noticed quite a few people were trying quite hard to justify the state of Hellgate London when it was launched too. I guess when you have people that follow a game for years you tend to get a subset that believes they "can do no wrong". It's okay to say a company that you respect has messed up - things go wrong, people make mistakes. You don't need to come up with flimsy justifications and flawed analogies.

I preordered this yesterday, and I just got my serial numbers, that fine. I didn't have to wait too long to get access to it, but there really is no way to justify pre-orders having to wait until after people purchasing on the day. It's just not a good way to treat your customer base, and especially not your most loyal fans.

There is no way to say this is okay, it isn't. Hopefully people won't end up waiting too long, and this won't happen again with future launches.

hmmm... I noticed that some people dont understand the meaning of pre-order. And that seems to be the problem for some.

Anyway, I will let them figure that one out for themself since they believe that pre-order means they get it first. When in fact, it is basicly just making an arrangement to order something that is not actually yet available. It only means you dont need to order it when it is avalable since you already pre-ordered yet. Clever Idea HUH? I bet the marketing guys that dreamed that up wet his pants at the idea.

If some guys are still struggling with that little fact, drink a warm glass of milk, think rally hard, and come to terms with the fact that your IQ is currently sitting at sea level.

*please excuse the spelling mistakes.. I did that to make it easier for some to read.

*Waits for the barrage... of stones...

I just realized... I am a @sshole... weeeeeee

*runs in circles

The two are entirely separate. Other orders being charged through in real-time in no way affected how quickly the preorder queue was processed.

I'm unsure of how your internal processes work, all I can see is the end result - which is people pre-ordering waiting until after people who bought it on the day, which isn't the way I believe it should be working.

I really do respect you guys as a company, this is just one area I think you need some improvement. Ideally what I want is pre-loading and unlocking immediately at the time of launch. That's what I pay for when pre-ordering digitally distributed software.

Well, my Sins is within my Stardock Account, but there is no sign of my CD Key (No email, just turned on Stardock Central and found Sins under purchased software)

I have had it. I have just got a mail that the where unable to process my order. But according to wirecard they got the money. They money will probably re-appear on my account tomorrow but regardless this is just silly. The problem is wirecard freezes the money for a preorder and then gives it away. But they treid to charge another 45 dollar not the one wircard saved for the game and i've only got about 60 on my account. I have now made direct order to get a serial , if that doesn't work they can keep their game.

you might be able to find out by clicking on your registration info at bottom right corner. Then clicking on the lookup serial button in the window

dear Mr_Snuffle

Your comments offend me. Please be careful what you post

further more I NEVER once said that stardock or ironclad games cant do anything wrong BUT there are ways and means of dealing with it and name-calling is not the way as all you are likely to do is upset the people on the other end as is now the case.

Stardock/ironclad should have probably shut down the pre order system 1 week ago and I think maby that’s were things went wrong.

I always get replies in tech forums and try even though I’m upset to keep a cool head and understand why things are the way they are as opposed to storming in and making broad statements like this is bad customer service.

Hope this thread dies a howibal howibal death.

You know.. I am a rational person, but I am inclined to agree with the complaints in this forum post.

#1: I preordered 10 am today, it is 9 minutes to 8 EST and I still have not received any more than order confirmation.

#2: Stardock has attempted to bill me THREE times, succeeding in two of those times.

#3: I can acknowledge that infrastructures under stress will produce delays, and that this is a majorly hyped game, hence I expected some delays. The proper response to major delays with a purchased product however is to keep your call center open, not close at 5 pm, like a normal company does when there are issues at product launch. Even email support would be nice, but instead I have to wait for the following working day to have them correct the over billing error they created.

#4: Exactly what is so 'collector' about the collectors edition if you don't have to preorder to get it. Is it a limited copy or is that just a marketing gimmick?

All in all, I have to say I'm terribly disappointed. Stardock makes a lot of good products, but this is my first experience purchasing directly from them, and I have to say I am not impressed. Given that, as a Canadian customer, I had to pay 71 dollars between shipping and currency conversion, and I did purchase the game 'early', I would have expected some degree of customer loyalty on the part of the company. If it weren't for the fact that I do want to support developers producing quality games, and this game reminds me of a game I remember fondly (Stars!) I would cancel my legitimate order and the illigetimate one.

Edit: Now 8:12 EST, no code, no reply from sales. Not pleased.

Well, as Yarlen commented elsewhere, we believed that people would be more upset if we charged them the day before without being able to give access to the final game just yet. Obviously though more seem to be annoyed with the inverse situation, so we'll be looking at doing things differently in future releases. There's really nothing more we could have done to speed things up though once we were fixed to the path we chose.




I'm very sorry that you've been charged incorrectly. Certainly sales will resolve it first thing in the morning. If you did not recieve any emailed serials for which you were successfully charged, check the My Account link at the top of the forums, and the Registrations link on that page. It should list Sins as purchased along with your serial(s) there.

The Collector's Edition is limited in quantity. Once we run out there will be no more (though granted, we have a good number on hand).