So... how does Early Access work with physical pre-orders?

[Snugglebutt]

Nope it will happen. Probably a few times over the first 2weeks, they'll have emergency maintenances. Cant test for everything, so the bugs will crop up as more people try to play. No matter how good Quality Assurance is, there's always something. All they can do is hope its not something insanely game breaking or critical. Though I doubt the game would be down for an entire week. Just maybe a day or 4-5hrs here and there.

Being down for an entire week was what I was referring to and the point of my previous comment which I do not think you understood since you first said will happen then agreed with me that you doubt will be down for an entire week which is what I said, the odd 4-5 hour maintenance after release and just prior is normal but being down a whole continuous week is what I would have an issue with if paid for that months game time subscription.

[Sakuraluna]

I suspect that the servers will go down for maintenance for probably the week of the release and come up early for the early access people.

I doubt they'll shut subscribers out entirely for a week just for not having the expansion on pre-order. In my experience, you can still access the base game regardless of having the expansions or not, you're just not able to access the expansion areas or any of the expansion content. So 3.0 without early access would be exactly like the latest 2.x patch except with people around you dinging 60 and dark knights running around and whatnot. You just wouldn't have access to those things yourself until after the early access period was over and you could buy and install the expansion yourself.

Although the first week or so probably will be pretty rocky, with bugs, emergency maintenances and all. So there will be that down time. But I doubt it would be significant.

[Snugglebutt]

I doubt they'll shut subscribers out entirely for a week just for not having the expansion on pre-order. In my experience, you can still access the base game regardless of having the expansions or not, you're just not able to access the expansion areas or any of the expansion content. So 3.0 without early access would be exactly like the latest 2.x patch except with people around you dinging 60 and dark knights running around and whatnot. You just wouldn't have access to those things yourself until after the early access period was over and you could buy and install the expansion yourself.

Although the first week or so probably will be pretty rocky, with bugs, emergency maintenances and all. So there will be that down time. But I doubt it would be significant.

I am thinking the same thing, what you described is what I assumed will actually happen.

[ruskie]

Mine ended up being delayed so I had to contact support for an extension of my code, but they were very helpful with that aspect.

Hmmm I had the same issue but didn't think of contacting support. I'll keep this in mind though.