Why offer merchandise exclusive minions/items when they almost instantly sell out?

[HyoMinPark]

I understand the idea of preorder bonuses, but I wish the older soundtracks were still available for purchase with the minions. I collect the minions and I would really like the wind-up Bahamut minion since T13 is probably my favorite fight. But it's doubtful they'll ever make it available again. And I can kind of understand why, because then people would probably ask for them to make the Cait Sith Doll available again (as it was a ARR preorder bonus, it kind of falls in the same category as the soundtrack minions). And my friends in game would probably have a fit over that. Myself, I don't really care if they made, for example, the carbuncle minions available again because I had it first but. It is what it is.

To this day, I am STILL on the waiting list for the emerald carbuncle....

I finally bought the carbuncle plushies from an independent seller on Amazon because I was on the waiting list for months and got tired of waiting. I do recall getting an email shortly after that they were available again in the SE Store, but I'm not sure if that's still the case now or not.

I'm just sticking to preordering stuff now so I can get the bonuses (I preordered the HW OST because that Spoony Bard minion ;_; plus the music in this game is just amazing, as per FF standards). I do wish they offered more than just Bluray for the OSTs. >.>

[Ninster]

This is sort of a sidetrack from the thread, and I'm not sure if anyone plays LoV much, but are any of these "bonus minions" particularly overpowered in LoV?

[Atoli]

I agree. Now of course I don't know the actual situation, but I'm pretty sure the amount of pre-orders pales to how many of a certain merch they sell after it got released.
Pre-orders are nice for the seller since you "know" you will be selling those while how much you sell afterwards can be anything between 0 and infinity, I get that.
Still, I think they are totally shooting themselves in the foot with this.
I really, REALLY wanted the soundtrack minions, but at the time of release, I couldn't just throw an additional 100€ for 2 CDs at SE.
The next month the soundtrack was out of stock, and when it finally came back, the minion was removed.
Just like the second poster in this thread, my motivation to buy went from 100 to 0%, since I can just listen to nearly all of the songs even without buying the soundtrack.

It's even worse when pretty much the only way to get one of the "limited" first ones with the code is through a RL event that is either super far away and therefore not exactly possible to visit for everyone
AND the selling of merchandise is so absolutely horribly organized that it doesn't even work out for those who attend and spend the entire time there trying to obtain said merch >.>

[Moonfish]

To this day, I am STILL on the waiting list for the emerald carbuncle....

I recently bought the topaz carbuncle plush, and they both are in stock in the American store.

[Emstidor]

This is sort of a sidetrack from the thread, and I'm not sure if anyone plays LoV much, but are any of these "bonus minions" particularly overpowered in LoV?

I have every single minion available through merch purchases, and haven't found any of them to be particularly useful.

I also like my item exclusivity. Wind-up Dalamud means more to me because I know he's not available anymore. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.

[Ametrine]

The minion thing is a nice bonus, but they haven't swayed me into purchasing an item.

I have the Relm minion. I have no connection to the character, so having it just get's me closer to the next achievement, but all I cared about was the awesome artbook. I never use her despite being an extremely rare minion. I like my Owlet and Coblyn Larva better.

I feel like I'm on the opposite side of people getting angry vanity bonuses are attached to merchadise. They are bonuses, and if a minion or emote tied to (locked behind?) merch makes you that mad, then you've got it made.

[Bloodyrains]

So more people will buy them. These posts are a prime example.

I'd love to buy them if they were not on Waiting List for months and months on end, not to mention the "Before Meteor" came back without the minion. If you look at the time it came back it took months. There's also the fact that the Soundtrack "A Realm Reborn" with the minion sold out in almost 3 days presumably because it had a minion.

The idea of first-run bonuses is to promote preorders. Preorder, and you'll get the reward. Don't preorder, and you might lose out.

First-run bonuses are cool and all but there's a lot of people that are not fans of unobtainable items, even more so when they started playing later than that item came out. It's just kind of a shame when you can't even obtain something no matter how hard you work or strive for it.

Sorry for the long post, I was out for most of the day yesterday.

[Bloodyrains]

Oh look, Final Fantasy Lore Book is already sold out, woo..

[SessionZero]

Don't the Japanese go bananas for the whole rarity schtick? That's what I always figured was the case when looking at pre-order bonuses from Square-Enix.

Obviously not the best course of action when you're trying to be a global company, but it may be a "When in Rome..." thing.

[Bloodyrains]

Don't the Japanese go bananas for the whole rarity schtick? That's what I always figured was the case when looking at pre-order bonuses from Square-Enix.

Obviously not the best course of action when you're trying to be a global company, but it may be a "When in Rome..." thing.

I guess so, but at this point Final Fantasy as a franchise has grown and spread to the point that it's huge. A friend of mine also said when he went to Japan he saw multiple stores selling FFXIV merchandise that were sold out on the SE store so that was also a shock.