Just so people reading this thread don't get even more confused:

The Steam offer is a Pre-Purchase not a pre-order.

The difference being you can get refunded in full with no hassle if all you have paid for is the pre-order but if you pre-purchased the game you will most likely not be able to get your money back.

I'd also like to add that, while Steam's wording is a little strange, it is not purposefully misleading.  People just don't read enough.

This is what the description of what you are purchasing actually says on Steam:

"Buy now and play the Aion beta for free until the full release this fall! Pre-Sale offer includes:

37 days of free play when the full game releases.
Access to beta and preview events."

If you buy the game from Steam you can play for free until the game is released, you just have to do a little bit of research into what they mean by "access to beta and preview events"

I have no sympathy for people jumping into a binding purchase without researching what they are paying for first.

Yeah uhmm..No thanks.

Preorder is one big, bloody fail nomatter what game you talk about. The way companies make games now(buggy as hell) I would never preorder anything. Last one to fail miserably I know of was that new Ghostbusters game. I was pretty close to buying it when I thought I should check the forums first. Good that I did too. People got alot of trouble with that game on the pc and that failed Securom protection/spyware scheme they automatically install for you. (Got burnt on Mass Effect, which the morons at Bioware STILL havent patched, grrrr, so yeah...)

Anyway, my advice is, check the official and various other forums before buying any game on the pc, and even on them consoles as even they can be quite buggy at times. Funny that, you got a set collection of rules in some non-changing hardware and they still manage to fuck shit up. Don't they bloody playtest the damn things....sigh

Also the € = $ crap Steam pulled is a big turnoff to the whole steam experience. Orangebox and L4D was good, but I don't use steam for anything else than those two nowadays.

Edit: The dude over me is a bloody douche. Misleading information is misleading information. The fault lie with steam, not the consumer allthough we all should become more conservative with our money. Developers today pull stuff like this all the time, que Funcom/Aventurine/Bioware etc...

Originally posted by Dameonk

Just so people reading this thread don't get even more confused:

The Steam offer is a Pre-Purchase not a pre-order.

The difference being you can get refunded in full with no hassle if all you have paid for is the pre-order but if you pre-purchased the game you will most likely not be able to get your money back.

I'd also like to add that, while Steam's wording is a little strange, it is not purposefully misleading.  People just don't read enough.

This is what the description of what you are purchasing actually says on Steam:

"Buy now and play the Aion beta for free until the full release this fall! Pre-Sale offer includes:

37 days of free play when the full game releases.
Access to beta and preview events."

If you buy the game from Steam you can play for free until the game is released, you just have to do a little bit of research into what they mean by "access to beta and preview events"

I have no sympathy for people jumping into a binding purchase without researching what they are paying for first.

     Oh, I'm so sorry for lacking your linguistic prowess. See, to me, "Access to beta" means "beta" as in a singular noun and not an adjective modifying the word "events". "Preview events", to me and others, was its own separate noun that indicated things would happen during the beta that you could participate in.

     Like some epic war or invasion or something that, five years from now, battle scarred and disillusioned, you could look that fresh new player in the eye and say, "I was there." Then hit him with a cane.

      Whether or not it was purposely misleading, you have to admit that it WAS misleading. I did not blindly jump into the purchase, I read the sale closely, I also looked here and read around. Satisfied, at the time, because no one had yelled bloody murder, I went ahead with my purchase.

       Now I'm $60 out, and pretty pissed off. So come down off your god damned high horse or when you fall off it, I'll be there to teabag you.

Originally posted by rlmccoy1987

If we do not enjoy the game, can we get a refund from the pre-order like gamestop and every other company does?

I am extremely curious about this.

This game has gotten my interest lately, but I want to try it before buying it.  It looks like I missed getting into closed Betas... but if I go to a GameStop near me, I can pre-order this (for how much) and be able to play in beta events (like tonight), then not have to buy it if I don't like it?  How do I get the actual software?  Does GameStop give me it?  A code to log on too?

I guess I'm looking for some clarification on the whole GameStop preorder deal.  I'd love to hop onto the beta tonight/this weekend and try it out, then be able to cancel my order if I do not.

Thanks!

Funny watching all the lemmings flock to get their pre orders.  I am going to be laughing at all of you when you find the game is less appealing after you play it for a bit.  This game is NOT the next Wow killer, not even close.  You should know better with NCSoft running it.  All the beautiful graphics in the world cannot substitute for gameplay issues and this game has the potential for many.

I have to agree,  Hell with the box and having to rush out to be first to get a limited print is not fair for those who dont live close to civilization with a store that carries it.   I am surrounded by GameStops and have my CE ordered (after noticing I had the game free cause they shut down TR and did that as a sorry gift).  So will apply the credit to something else.  I notice a lot of people having to order online because of location.   Also some of these stores are so dumb they dont even know about it.

Knowing that I was going to get this game anyway and that Gamestop is apparently out of CE boxes helps.  I just checked the Gamestop website and they only have the standard edition.  Maybe I can pick up the figurine at a later point.

Still.. the fact that Valve used such misleading language is really unfortunate.  I think that, from now on, I'm going to trust Valve significantly less and I'll most likely go elsewhere to buy products after this experience.  This is going to leave a bitter impression on me for quite some time.

Bad show, Valve.  I'm very disappointed.

uhm ... I'm one of the douches who was fast enough to pre-purchase the game first, and go to this forum after .. but f*** it ... Now I just need to know wtf I gotta do to play on the beta event, to ease the pain .. Been searching for a while and I found the date for the event and so on, but it doesen't say what I got to do, to play the beta event ..

Help me before I kill my mom ..

thx

Originally posted by MrSeb

uhm ... I'm one of the douches who was fast enough to pre-purchase the game first, and go to this forum after .. but f*** it ... Now I just need to know wtf I gotta do to play on the beta event, to ease the pain .. Been searching for a while and I found the date for the event and so on, but it doesen't say what I got to do, to play the beta event ..

Help me before I kill my mom ..

 

thx

Assuming you got a beta key from Steam, you can do what I'm doing:

I got the pre-order from GameStop, which came with a Beta key.  So I searched for a link to download the client... came across this one:

http://aion.patcher.ncsoft.com/liteinstaller/aion.exe
~6Gb

I'm downloading it now (on 10Mb cable connection) with a ridiculous download speed of 84 Kb/s, and that's a high number.  I even tried to find a torrent of the client and found a couple, but there's barely anyone seeding.  So while I've got a Beta code and hope to get into this weekend's beta, this thing is taking all night and looks like some of tomorrow to download :(

Don't know where to look for my beta code.. But too bad with your downloading speed..

Took me about 3 hours from steam with ~550 kb/s ...