Felt scammed by SE

[Rongway]

What happens if pre-order it and in Nov. you can't pay for it for some reason. So it be better for the to charge you right when you pre-order it.

There’s a “debit now” option in the order management to charge you immediately.

[Eris4494]

Thats good to know.

[Neoyoshi]

That's so weird to bundle things like that.

o.O Why bundle in past products to a unreleased (New) product at all? That doesn't even make sense on any level that I can think of; as a business model for bundling content, a game should always be bundled from: Game release 1.0-to-current release x.xx; that's how it's just always been done for as long as I've been a mmogamer.

I've never seen anyone else do that before, and if there are others who do that, it's just flatout dumb and they aren't thinking clearly.

[kaynide]

That's so weird to bundle things like that.

o.O Why bundle in past products to a unreleased (New) product at all? That doesn't even make sense on any level that I can think of; as a business model for bundling content, a game should always be bundled from: Game release 1.0-to-current release x.xx; that's how it's just always been done for as long as I've been a mmogamer.

I've never seen anyone else do that before, and if there are others who do that, it's just flatout dumb and they aren't thinking clearly.

It's basic business practice for certain games/products.

They do this so you don't have to pay for each individual expansion to play, which would make the price of entry to this game something like $2-300 (assuming 30-60 bucks per base game/old expansion).

In FFXIV, you are required to have played through older expansions to even be able to access newer content, so it makes sense to throw old content in.

Certain other MMOs either play as self-contained stories (Guildwars 1, for example, was 3 separate stories that had a unifying "ending" expansion), or the game just doesn't care if you do all content and others will just outright assume you did the old content even if you choose not to (Guildwars 2).

The product OP bought (and in question) is a pre-order of Endwalker. As a free bonus, they will get access to all previous expansions included. They were not purchasing Shadowbringers or any other expansion. The ARR-Current release package (which you mentioned above) is also available for purchase.

[Iscah]

Why bundle in past products to a unreleased (New) product at all?

as a business model for bundling content, a game should always be bundled from: Game release 1.0-to-current release x.xx

So which is it?

Is it standard practice for the forthcoming Endwalker complete edition to contain all expansions up to the current release (including the now-previous expansion Shadowbringers), or is it "weird" to bundle them together?

There's no difference between the two ideas besides a perspective of time. Past products are bundled with an unreleased product because that is what will be expected when it is released and becomes the current product.

Apparently the game can't grant you permission to access Shadowbringers-as-bundled-with-Endwalker until you actually own Endwalker, which isn't released yet.

[Stepjam]

I do think it would be nice if Squeenix could give you a code for Shadowbringers/Stormblood if you've fully paid for Endwalker for newer players. This is always an awkward time period for new players.

That said, the page does say exactly how it is, so it is what it is. It could just be more complicated than they want to deal with to separate the two, especially since most people buying Endwalker already own Shadowbringers, so an extra code would be unnecessary for them.