Ok I got an email this morning saying that if you bought your pre-order form Best  Buy or  Gamestop you get in on the Head Start. I try to be " GREEN " when possible and dowloaded from D2D (no boxes paper plastic ect ). I have seen conflicting post on whether I get in on  Head start or not and what about the people who ordered from amazon or Wal-Mart. Anyone know the facts on this?

I saw a post with a dev reply on the CO forums about this. He said basically that if you ordered from Gamestop or Bestbuy(I think... might have been Amazon)  then you get the headstart..... implying that other places do not get it.

I also pre-ordered from D2D. :( Then I noticed that gamestop has a digital download. I hate collecting CDs and boxes for games. I'd rather have somewhere I can download them in the future. I guess the good news is D2D and Steam don't remove your ability to download the game after a period of time like gamestop.

I also ordered from D2D and searched all the threads i could on this. Every Dev post does indeed confirm that they made a deal with Gamestop and BB which gives folks who pre-ordered from them exclusive access to headstart.

Personally I bet the Devs are wishing they had gone a different route with that now, and that seems reflected in several of their posts, but I think that's just how it is bud.

I'm not sweatin it myself - I'm hooked and will be gearing up for the Sept. 1 release anyway. Of course I'll try to log into headstart too - just to see if I'm wrong!

I'm Hooked no doubt but can't say I'm not gonna be upset if D2D won't be in Head Start and really upset if BB and Gamstop are out of preorder keys. I have this coming weekend off.

I doubt head start will be as much of a factor in Champions as in other games. If anything the main reason to get in ahead is to reserve a specific hero name. Honestly...I welcome some time off from the game :P

Originally posted by Czzarre

I doubt head start will be as much of a factor in Champions as in other games. If anything the main reason to get in ahead is to reserve a specific hero name. Honestly...I welcome some time off from the game :P

You can't reserve names in Champions Online.  Everyone can have the same name if they wanted to do that because they add a tag to your name made from your forum name like  MyChampion@me    etc etc.   The major point to early start is to get out of the tutorial zones before they become mega flooded and ...um the early start event they just announced.  Other than that in 3 days its unlikely to many people would get to far.

Here is the complete list of pre-order and the bonuses.

www.champions-online.com/retail

F F F F F ! THE OFFICIAL REPLY FROM D2d!

Hi @@@#@#$!

Direct2Drive is not participating in the Head Start program however we are offering our Pre-Order customers the following exclusive content when they purchase on Direct2Drive:

Mechanoppendage Backpack:

A multi-armed, multi-use backpack for the on-the-go gadgeteer. Ideal for heroes who juggle ideas, experiments-and enemies!

Beta Access:

Access to the currently open beta!

I hope this information helps!

Well I'll not buy from download service again. Not because of bad service not because I can help the enviroment, but because I can't go into the internet and choke the living S!@$ out of someone . Where are you NEO ! Also I don't know who to pass judgement on. I mean who decided this cryptic , D2D, Best Buy, Gamestop, the consumer is paying the same using less materials and getting less. Arggg! this is why America is so messed up , I get to say where is my lawyer I smell money!

pffft

Originally posted by Czzarre

I doubt head start will be as much of a factor in Champions as in other games. If anything the main reason to get in ahead is to reserve a specific hero name. Honestly...I welcome some time off from the game :P

You're thinking of the Aion pre-order. You can't reserve names in CO, although there's no need to since names are not unique in the respect that every player is known as <character name>@<forum handle> in the game.

I initially pre-ordered CO from Amazon.com (I wanted the jester hat) until I realized that I wouldn't get into the head-start/early access program. Considering that I have a whole week off from my university (that's a LONG summer vacation, isn't it?), I wanted to get to take advantage of the opportunity.

So I placed an order from Gamestop over a week ago. You know that little blip on the order page that states you'll receive a key via e-mail within 48 hours if you pre-order the game? Well, I should have listened to the people who said to be cautious, because I never received my key. I contacted both Trymedia (the digital content customer service provider) and help@gamestop.com, but each one replied by telling me to contact the other department, although help@gamestop.com told me that they might be able to PHYSICALLY mail me a key (keep in mind this was a digital download order), but that there was the possibility that they were out of keys.

I responded by asking them to cancel my pre-order, and then, astonishingly, today I received two keys via e-mail, so they apparently didn't want to cancel my pre-order.  (It took Trymedia nearly three days to respond to my initial inquiry, but when I e-mailed them and informed them that I had received my key and didn't want to cancel my order after all, they responded within an hour. *facepalm*)

I'm really happy I received the key(s), but I don't think that I would have had I not nagged them (Gamestop) to death. This was almost as bad as AoC's head-start woes, with the exception of the fact that Funcom was charging head-start players to download the client. I ended up giving the extra key to a friend who was unable to secure a key that would grant him head start access, so I guess it all worked out in the end.