Quote Originally Posted by Kaedan View Post
MMOs never come with the full game on disc. You always have to download something.
Many (I'd assume most) come with as much of the game as was ready by the time they needed to get the "final" version to the manufacturer who actually makes the disks, packages them, and sends them out to retailers, who in turn need to get them in time to ship them to customers. All of that requires significant lead time, and the developers continue working on the game during that interim between sending out that print copy and the game's release. Those updates made between the "final" disk version and the actual release date version have to be downloaded, even by those who buy the game on disk.

But usually, you'd at least get the main bulk of the game on the disk, and then just download those updates. If it's true that SE didn't do it that way, and instead printed out useless disks with nothing on them but the launcher, it's a total waste. Why print disks at all rather than just acknowledge that they made a download-only game? Or given that they did print disk versions, why not make use of that to make it easier both for their customers with slow connections and for their own patch servers?