I think they wanted to see how many clients were being downloaded from other online sources and monitoring those to identify potential fraud accounts and the like.

I have no reason to believe this outside of the fact that botting and hacking have already become significant issues within the game.

Some suppliers might find their ability to sell the game in question if there are consistant sources of client sales and nefarious intent at play.

Again this is just guess work on my behalf. Stand alone retail locations might be struggling with sales in comparasin to the digital download, but I sense the preorders would be indications of the number of physical boxes required. If there was an issue with this I imagine the retailer would be held responsible for over ordering. Maybe not.

Originally posted by Zeymere

So why did they stop selling the digital copy?  For a game that is not subscription based this really concerns me.  It is very odd.  Please enlighten me.

For the reason they posted in the same post  that they explained why they stoped selling which was in the post that explained why they did what they did which if you read the post they made about why they stopped selling the digital copy you would know. Oh, just in case they said why they they did in that post. You know the one?

Originally posted by Creslin321

Originally posted by Astropuyo

Originally posted by Creslin321

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by Astropuyo

When has a company ever denied money for "technical" reasons. Come on now. They admit they undermined their distro pattern they get sued, you have to make it spin positive like you care.

In reality 50 lawyers are barking constantly because of the huge investments being made into these keys and license rights.

Blizzard admits to 'grossly underestimating demand' for World of Warcraft in 2004

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02/12/blizzard-admits-to-grossly-underestimating-demand-for-world-of/2

Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce was quite up-front with the studio's stumbles in 2004 as WoW launched to unprecedented demand; he's admitted that Blizzard execs "grossly underestimated" how many people wanted to play the game, forcing the company to cease shipping boxes to stores while tech was improved to deal with the influx.

"I don't think we had any idea what we were getting ourselves into," Pearce said at the recent DICE executive summit. The studio quickly ramped up from its 500-employee taskforce to 4,700 people in 11 cities across the world.

 Also, in response to Astro's legal theory about sales being stopped...

If this were true, then ANet would simply say that they will not be selling GW2 directly anymore, but it is available at your friendly neighborhood game store or website.

Saying that they "sold out" when the real issue is a legal dispute is absolutely stupid because people are going to expect them to start selling again.  If they never sell a single copy of their game directly again, then everyone is going to realize that it was BS...it's not like they could hide that forever.

No...ANet "sold out" because their servers got slammed.  You can spin that positively by saying that they sold more than expected, or negatively by saying that they failed to forecast demand.  The reality is somewhere in the middle there.

You people are dim, Oddly enough after today, over 4 colleagues have sold out.

 

Theory? There is no magical theory. It is fact.

 

This is where some of you are really stupid, like class A-stupid.

 

You need to look up self incrimination.

Now you need to recognize they sold us keys for a rate.

 

They then sold keys at a churn out rate, by passing their resellers/(retailers).

In turn they sold us, those of us who sell digital downloads/retail boxes.

 

We I say "we" bought a ton of keys and they could not be moved because anet has been selling them direct using sites like mmorpg as the "Buy now".

It's like debating with tables with some of you folks, there is no theory. It's fact. You clearly have no concept of how key purchasing (rights) works, if you did you'd see this as a very simple issue.

 

They messed up distro, they pre-sold keys and advertised a BUY NOW option that went direct to manufacturer.  (Publisher)

Which on average is fine for a normal mmo, however the sold based on hype release to people.

They then have effectively used this hype to? Sell for themselves and leave those who purchased keys with a very large bill.

 

It's sad I'm explaining such a basic principle to some of you, most of you got it. Cheers on that, but you table heads need to calm down. Stop acting like you have a vested interest in this, it's kinda sad.

I'm sitting on active inventory that for the first time since launch is moving. It was not moving before A-net shut down their direct sales. We also had been looking in civil action.

One again my "Exp" trumps your "Assumption".

Soooo you're really good at calling me stupid and in general just sounding like Gordon Gekko.  I will give you that.

Other than that though here is what is going on...

you are claiming that ANet is lying, you offer no proof other than claiming that you have inside information.  If you really have proof, like a trustworthy document, then show us.  If you're not willing to, then I'm not going to believe you over ANet.

Also, I would like to know if you will publicly admit that you're wrong if ANet resumes selling directly.  You've been pretty rude and demeaning to a lo of people here and I think you owe it to them.

 

 Looks like ANet has re-opned digital sales.  I'm curious Astro, do you still believe that they shut down their direct sales because of legal disputes with their retail partners?  You called a lot of us "stupid" for not "realizing" this "fact" earlier.

I don't know much about law, but I do know that it normally takes longer than a week and a half to resolve legal disputes.

Originally posted by Creslin321

Originally posted by Creslin321

Originally posted by Astropuyo

Originally posted by Creslin321

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by Astropuyo

 

 Looks like ANet has re-opned digital sales.  I'm curious Astro, do you still believe that they shut down their direct sales because of legal disputes with their retail partners?  You called a lot of us "stupid" for not "realizing" this "fact" earlier.

I don't know much about law, but I do know that it normally takes longer than a week and a half to resolve legal disputes.

That makes sense...but only if you would assume that they actually already took measures to get to court but if they just found a way to settle there dispute without involving anything like Lawyers and courts (which would be very bad press) something like hmmm lets say not selling copies on there site till there partners moved enough of there inventory (which is what Astro implied if i am not mistaken) than the matter could very well be resolved in around 2 weeks yes.

I don't know much about law either but i do know a thing or two about business and most of the time such matters get resolved outside court rooms and without the bad press attached to it.

Originally posted by Creslin321

 

 Looks like ANet has re-opned digital sales.  I'm curious Astro, do you still believe that they shut down their direct sales because of legal disputes with their retail partners?  You called a lot of us "stupid" for not "realizing" this "fact" earlier.

I don't know much about law, but I do know that it normally takes longer than a week and a half to resolve legal disputes.

It was all tinfoil hat.      And they're not even particularly uncommon.   That's just the way of the internet.

Heck, that wasn't even the worst one in these forums.  There someone else who trolls thread-after-thread and keeps harping on the way "business" runs and has got to be one of the most clueless perons about how 'business runs' I've ever run into.    When this person speaks, you can be sure something close to 100% the opposite is true...

Originally posted by Warband
I'd say the answer is most probably fairly simple. They didn't want to introduce more servers to deal with the initial rush as it would cost money when that rush subsided. So they limited sales so that server capacity would hold and reintroduce when they subsided at bit at least in the starter intial half of the game.

I agree with this. It makes sense. 

The other answer people like about it being so popular and exceeding sales just point to poor planning on Anet's part...and we can't have that now can we?