Black Library fiction The End and the Death - Volume III

[OpossumStrong]

7 minutes ago, SpaceDwalin said:

Interesting that the limited edition book is "temporarily out of stock " rather than "sold out online". Maybe a sign they've decided to make more, maybe MTO?

Or it could of course just be another webstore mistake.

It's a common mistake on their website

[SpaceDwalin]

2 minutes ago, OpossumStrong said:

It's a common mistake on their website

Oh well, there goes hope.

[Subtleknife]

7 hours ago, Kastor Krieg said:

GW created this issue and have zero interest in resolving it. Zero.

Unless they get pushback from the customer base. This has worked before. Our pushback and wallet-voting has caused them to shift policies, change CEOs, reengage on the social media and many others.

The only losing move is to do nothing and politely take it.

 

If GW created this issue they have to solve it. 

 

Your zero interest in solving  it comment is demonstrably untrue. They put a queue in place. That is an attempt (a pretty bad one I admit) to solve the issue.

 

The customer base does not have the capacity to coordinate effectively. Stop buying isn't a solution as others will just do so. GW need to be the party that fix this. Please explain how GW customers will coordinate to make the "just stop buying" argument actually work?

 

6 hours ago, Blindhamster said:

no.

 

buying the books is a choice, you do have a choice.

 

im a blood angels fan, i have been for 27 years at this point, i desperately wanted the sanguinius primarch book limited ed. It sold out before I got a chance. I refused to pay scalper prices so didn’t get it. It sucked, but I made that choice.

 

limited editions are meant to be limited. GW used to make more, and then they didn’t sell. It’s a commonly known fact. So now they don’t make as many. A limited Ed theoretically shouldn’t be “there’s enough for everyone” otherwise it isn’t well.. limited. 
 

GW absolutely does have issues, their new website sucks, their queuing system clearly also sucks, and the way they police single order per customer obviously sucks too (why the hell can you just use the same account and order to multiple addresses..). They could potentially also look at making more, but they won’t look at making so many more that we still wouldn’t get angry posts about failing to get it, because of the two facts already mentioned (limited editions never used to sell like they do now, causing dead stock and the whole fact it’s meant to be limited). They could go back to collectors editions (which is a different thing entirely).

 

So, I already had said it and I’ll reiterate, yes GW have some of the blame. But everyone saying “I had no choice but to pay scalpers prices for an optional thing I didn’t need, just wanted” are also part of the problem. I’m not saying it doesn’t suck when you miss out on something, I have missed out on other limited edition things both from GW and other things many times too, it sucks hard, especially to obsessive collector types - which I am too, but saying you had no choice.. is wrong, and opting to pay the scalpers just makes it a self fulfilling prophecy that they’ll keep doing it, and thanks to organised subscription schemes and bots to make it work.. they won’t stop even if GW makes more stock.

 

P.s. agree with Kastor, just stop buying stuff, or at least limited editions. Vote with your wallet 

 

Yes.

 

If one wants to complete their collection then they don't have a choice. The only option they have is pay the scalpers price.

 

Don't buy it, isn't an effective solution. Please explain how the customers are going to organise in such a way that this method will actually be effective? 

 

The only party that can fix this is GW. They have all the blame here. Trying to shift it to customers that are being hung out to dry isn't helpful really.

Edited January 14 by Subtleknife

[StraightSilver]

Here's hoping they stick by the notification that it was region locked and all those scalpers that got round it by ordering the book in another territory don't get them..... Ha ha ha.

[Matcap86]

2 hours ago, Osteoclast said:

I can’t be the only one confused by the dissonance of people wondering why GW’s queue system is borked while also saying that they’ve got a dozen separate tabs entered into it, right?

 

I mean there's quite a scale difference between someone having the store open on their phone and laptop at the same time and people DDOSing the site with 1000(0)s of requests through botscripts. 

[Marshal Rohr]

They aren’t having issues with availability from the queuing system, they are having issues preventing scalpers from bypassing the queue entirely. If the stock is gone minutes after the url for the book is published to the site then the issue is related to that somehow. 
 

 

edit: the good news is, the nightmare is over now. No more Siege books to come and no one is into the regular 40K stories enough to try and spend a thousand bucks on a leather bound version of Indomitus stories. 
 

the next time you see GW offer a limited version like this make the specific choice not to buy it and buy the regular version instead. The stories themselves haven’t been good since ADB moved on. The only way to win is not to play. 

Edited January 14 by Marshal Rohr

[Matcap86]

2 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

They aren’t having issues with availability from the queuing system, they are having issues preventing scalpers from bypassing the queue entirely. If the stock is gone minutes after the url for the book is published to the site then the issue is related to that somehow. 

 

Not even minutes. Seconds. 

[Marshal Rohr]

What’s even more insane is that there are only 2500 copies of this which means at maximum there are 2500 orders. GW can find the scalpers by combing through each order. It’s pretty easy to determine if a purchase is legitimate or not if it was purchased with things like one use gift cards, contacting the individual email address asking for verification, etc. they just don’t want to. They don’t care if people complete their collections and I wouldn’t be surprised if a fair few of the scalpers aren’t actually GW employees and Trade Account holders/LGS. 

[Sky Potato]

2 hours ago, Subtleknife said:

 

If GW created this issue they have to solve it. 

 

Your zero interest in solving  it comment is demonstrably untrue. They put a queue in place. That is an attempt (a pretty bad one I admit) to solve the issue.

The queue is there to stop the webstore crashing at 1001 like it used to do, to be fair. It has a side benefit of slowing scalpers down, sure, but it exists to keep the website online.

 

The fact that scalpers managed to get around the queue system entirely does kinda ask the question, what was that £11 million actually spent on?

[Firedrake Cordova]

57 minutes ago, Sky Potato said:

The queue is there to stop the webstore crashing at 1001 like it used to do, to be fair.

We'll never know the exact reasons for GW buying it unless they state them, but looking at the Queue-It product description it states, "Control traffic with Queue-it's virtual waiting room to deliver a fair online experience without crashes or bots", so it could be either or both  

[irlLordy]

The website may not be crashing anymore, but its still effectively unavailable to non bots when the queue is up. Even worse, its unavailable worldwide, even if the demand is only coming from one region, so they lose out on any other sales people were considering.

[Etruscan]

I wonder how many complaint emails they will receive. They’re obliged to reply to any emails so I wonder if internally there will be discussions or whether they simply don’t care. Fundamentally unless people kick up a stink and create some bad PR I can’t imagine much will change.

[Subtleknife]

1 hour ago, Sky Potato said:

The queue is there to stop the webstore crashing at 1001 like it used to do, to be fair. It has a side benefit of slowing scalpers down, sure, but it exists to keep the website online.

 

The fact that scalpers managed to get around the queue system entirely does kinda ask the question, what was that £11 million actually spent on?

GW have stated "A queue will be in place at Warhammer.com to ensure fairness." They arent saying it is in place to stop crashing (although I agree that is another reason for it).

 

It doesn't work but they recognise a problem and have done something to address it. 

 

 

Personally there is a fairly simple fix. GW put these LE pre-orders many months in advance of their sale. The pre order window could then be for 24hrs and then they print that many and ship. No need to worry about printing too many and them sitting on store shelves etc. Although with that method, I think they would probably have to drop the authors signature for the really popular books. 

Edited January 14 by Subtleknife

[crimsondave]

An are you human test would fix this.  I’ve been saying it for years now.  Not a “are you human” checkbox.  One with pictures you have to identify.  This has been around forever.  That’s the fix.  They know it.  If GW wanted this fixed it would already be fixed.

[m_r_parker]

I was giving this some thought last night, and perhaps someone with a better memory than myself can confirm this - but didn't the queue work differently before the webstore change?

I seem to recall that the queue would stop access to the Webstore for a period before a new Pre-Order / Release (an hour, for example), and place people in a holding pattern until the point at which Pre-Orders go live - at which point it drip-feeds people into the webstore at a rate the site can manage. You got 15 minutes (or was it 10?) to make your purchases, or you got booted, and your spot was provided to the next person in the queue.

Because none of that happened yesterday. The queue went live about an hour before Pre-Order time, but the webstore wasn't shut - you filtered through the queue and were presented to the site well in advance of the pre-orders going live, but with no way to remain there as you were on a strict time limit. I had one window that kicked me out of the store at just before 09:50 (~5 minutes before the book was listed), and everyone was left with trying to get a sweet-spot of joining the queue at the right time as to not be late or early. 

Or am I going crazy again? It's happened before...

[TheWarmaster]

Do we know roughly when Part III is coming to audible/audio book? 

Have they mentioned a date for that? Is there usually a lead time after the actual book/ebook release date or is it usually at the same time? 

[firestorm40k]

1 minute ago, TheWarmaster said:

Do we know roughly when Part III is coming to audible/audio book? 

Have they mentioned a date for that? Is there usually a lead time after the actual book/ebook release date or is it usually at the same time? 

They're usually released the same time; I had a notification yesterday that it was up for pre-order on Audible, so I added it to my wishlist on there 

[Guest Triszin]

2 minutes ago, TheWarmaster said:

Do we know roughly when Part III is coming to audible/audio book? 

Have they mentioned a date for that? Is there usually a lead time after the actual book/ebook release date or is it usually at the same time? 

Audible has it the week it releases usually

[irlLordy]

57 minutes ago, m_r_parker said:

I was giving this some thought last night, and perhaps someone with a better memory than myself can confirm this - but didn't the queue work differently before the webstore change?

I seem to recall that the queue would stop access to the Webstore for a period before a new Pre-Order / Release (an hour, for example), and place people in a holding pattern until the point at which Pre-Orders go live - at which point it drip-feeds people into the webstore at a rate the site can manage. You got 15 minutes (or was it 10?) to make your purchases, or you got booted, and your spot was provided to the next person in the queue.

 

Yes, that was how it worked before. The difference now I believe is that the queue system will kick in automatically based on traffic, rather than being enabled by someone ahead of time. So it can let you in before the preorders actually become available (or just not let you in as bots keep skipping ahead of you in the queue).

[TheArtilleryman]

This is just nuts. 
 

Limited edition should be exactly that. Limited. However it should not be possible to order more than one per person. Using a Captcha or something as already suggested and only allowing one book per transaction and per account to go through. 
 

Then… they should make the standard edition of this and of all HH books print on demand as it’s just silly to not be able to buy physical copies of these.

[Matcap86]

I saw an explanation online which made sense, though keep in mind I don't know if it's actually how it works:

 

Because the current queue system triggers on site load instead of manually from a certain time, scalpers could test out the max load of the site (for example 10k users at the same time). Doing that they can ensure coordinated waves of 10k bots that constantly flood the site and keep sitting in the shop for the max 10 minutes. So 10k at 10:25, 10k at 10:35, 10k at 10:45, etc. Hence why people saw their queue times climb up as it would normally give an estimate based on the average time in the store, but now every bot would sit there for the max amount of time raising that average and preventing regular users accessing the store. 

 

When launch time rolls around a lot of the "users" on the site are these bot waves which start to scoop up as much as they can. Also processing quicker than actual customers can. 

 

If this is correct that would explain why even people in stores had virtually no chance of getting through and online it really became a miracle if you got one. 

[dienekes96]

They’ve had this problem ever since their first attempt to sell Aurelian.  They don’t care to fix it, not seriously.  They just want to sell their stuff and turn the profit, and let the chips fall where they eBay.

[TheArtilleryman]

14 minutes ago, Matcap86 said:

I saw an explanation online which made sense, though keep in mind I don't know if it's actually how it works:

 

Because the current queue system triggers on site load instead of manually from a certain time, scalpers could test out the max load of the site (for example 10k users at the same time). Doing that they can ensure coordinated waves of 10k bots that constantly flood the site and keep sitting in the shop for the max 10 minutes. So 10k at 10:25, 10k at 10:35, 10k at 10:45, etc. Hence why people saw their queue times climb up as it would normally give an estimate based on the average time in the store, but now every bot would sit there for the max amount of time raising that average and preventing regular users accessing the store. 

 

When launch time rolls around a lot of the "users" on the site are these bot waves which start to scoop up as much as they can. Also processing quicker than actual customers can. 

 

If this is correct that would explain why even people in stores had virtually no chance of getting through and online it really became a miracle if you got one. 

Wow. That really is

[WrathOfTheLion]

I've suspected something similar, where they'd keep a pool of queue connections with the bots for a bit before, allowing a continuous stream of them that will eventually be in the valid time slot. Then, when the appropriate time occurs and the item is up on the store, they can expend one of their now valid tokens per purchase, if a queue token expires when a purchase is made.

 

I originally thought they might be able to bypass it, but the abnormal queue traffic I think is evidence that they're interacting with it.

[GenerationTerrorist]

I think I am going to give up any hope of getting my hands on the Deathwing box when it goes up for pre-order. Save myself the dismay when the inevitable happens, as it appeared to do for so many with this release.