A Korean CM has posted (what is yet an unofficial posting) that ANY pre-order of Reaper of Souls (Standard, Digital Deluxe, and physical Collectors Edition) is going to come with Imperius Wings as well as a free Demon Hunter character in Heroes of the Storm. This is a rather interesting development (just one month before release) since I was expecting marketing to use it (the wings) to incentivize players towards some other franchise purchase to get those wings.
Note that since a Korean CM is talking about it, this means that it has already been discussed in some form globally by the entire team. These decisions are made at corporate headquarters in Irvine so we’ll probably get an official confirmation sometime on Thursday, Feb 20th.
Update: the following interview notes that details will be forthcoming in 1-2 weeks regarding patch 2.0.1, these new expansion bonuses, and the in-game bonus experience events that are being planned.
Opinion: If this actually is officially announced, this very last minute addition is pointing to lower than expected digital pre-orders; throwing this out to the Standard edition would sort of point to that (note that I’ve posted before that I expected Reaper of Souls to do relatively well regardless of my own and many others sentiments; I basically said I expect them to announce at least 2 million units sold at launch -> http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11675567876?page=2#36 when they announce their Q1 2014 results). I doubt cancellations have had any major impact (I myself cancelled only my digital deluxe pre-order but not my CE); just lower than expected pre-order numbers if this actually pans out.
Unfortunately, some folks don’t get marketing 101 basics. It’s great they are finally dangling some sort of pre-order carrot. But this ignores the why now angle. Pre-order features like this is something that marketing would not do at the 1 month countdown mark. From a marketing perspective, you want the biggest bang and that’s when you first announce the release of a title, where you have something called a pre-order BONUS to hook people in immediately from the get go.
I noted the above link showing my earlier take where I said that I felt that the expansion would do well. I stand by that as 2 million should be easily achievable at launch. However, when something like these bonuses are provided at the last minute, and it also is seemingly going to apply to the base standard edition, that says something completely different. They want to boost pre-orders and sales in general because the reality with this move, is that they probably aren’t hitting their internal pre-release forecast numbers. And this is the carrot to make that happen.
Their fiscal Q1 2014 ends on March 31st. Until this piece of news is officially announced, there hasn’t been any incentive beyond the physical Collectors Edition, to get those still sitting on the fence, to commit. This can have a potential dulling effect on their Q1 launch numbers. The expansion is going to launch with issues as well which would have an additional wait and see effect, and impact those release numbers. The above is a reactive marketing response, not proactive. The official PR will be spun the other way though (we’re they will say they’ve heard players requests for wings, and they are making them available to everyone who pre-orders by some cut-off date).
