Black Library fiction The End and the Death - Volume III

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

Getting a webpage under maintenance page now if I try to go to games workshops website through google XD

[Scribe]

What a laugh.

[Matcap86]

I mean, if they cancelled the scalper copies before, they can surely do it again. Just send them to local stores at least that way it's actual enthusiasts getting them instead of scalpers. 

[m_r_parker]

26 minutes ago, son of the forest said:

Did anyone here manage to get a copy?

I did.

 

i was in a store. I camped out there from 10am to ensure I was first in the queue. I was signed in from 3pm, and hitting refresh from 15 minutes to 4pm. The site was a complete mess, various errors all over the place. I don’t think it actually made to the site until 20 past 4, but was inaccessible for a while. I managed to get lucky - for a brief moment the “add to cart” button went yellow. still took me about 10 minutes to get through the checkout page and get an order reference number. The queue was still listed as 'paused' at this time.

 

Feel really bad for the guy behind me…

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

Well at least one of us was able to snag one

[Watch Captain]

Spent 45 mins in a GW store and it just wouldn't go through.. grrrr

[Dried]

No one in my group managed to get less than an hour left...

[Bev'an]

Whole world going for 500 copies, sheesh. Did they even run the captcha?? 

[Sword Brother Adelard]

1 minute ago, Bev'an said:

Whole world going for 500 copies, sheesh. Did they even run the captcha?? 

Yeah. It was there. 

 

The demand is probably vastly outstripping supply even without the scalpers at this point.

[Petitioner's City]

 

Disgusting if true!

[phandaal]

36 minutes ago, Matcap86 said:

I mean, if they cancelled the scalper copies before, they can surely do it again. Just send them to local stores at least that way it's actual enthusiasts getting them instead of scalpers. 

 

For sure. They have to be cancelling scalper sales in real-time at this point.

[aa.logan]

10 minutes ago, Petitioner's City said:

 

Disgusting if true!

I find all capitalist endeavours pretty distasteful but this seems especially grimy.

 

No idea how it can be realistically solved though. From people seemingly in the know, I’ve gotten the impression that made-to-order for LE books isn’t cost effective enough for BL to justify, and limiting purchases to those who already have made them (like me, for the record) is inherently unfair. It’s profitable enough for folk to try and buy copies to resell even without bots so I don’t think it’s a problem that can be stopped with technology- I’m certain that many of those trying to get to the site today using traditional methods were trying to get copies to flog on eBay.
 

BL books are possibly the product that GW seem to care least about, yet they are the ones that seem to be attracting the most scalper interest. No idea what that means, but it feels noteworthy.

[Jalleo]

So my experience in a UK store today.

The book didnt appear on sale for at least 10 minuites up until that point there were no issues.

 

Afterwards it was lagging to hell and it was seriously overwhelmed 502,503 errors. The queue wasnt even letting people in yet. The scalpers did skip the queue but it wasnt selling instantly as it seemed there was something trying to reject their inputs. After 10 minuites or so I finally got my order done after multiple attempts as the website was just barely functional.

The person behind me started to try and get theirs and the issues started compounding. Something called cloudfront started to reject requests to the website entirely too they did manage to get it but it took slightly longer than me. After this the third person in the queue kept trying and trying even after I left. The back end of the website was refusing anything to be added to the cart and was providing a direct SQL error output of what the issue was.

 

I dont know if he got his copy. (Exact timings are not provided this is somewhat of a estimate)

[son of the forest]

I've not seen a large influx of copies on ebay, maybe scalpers have had their copies cancelled?

[G8Keeper]

Cloudflare? 

[Jalleo]

No it specifically tated cloudfront I believe. It might be a similar or specific sub product thats similar or something.

 

In all honesty I dont believe this can be blamed at GW only. Its hindsight and certainly something they can learn from (especially those that planned it). The egregious scalping by those not of the community looking at this as a money making excercise is the biggest issue. None of the instore staff for any of the outlets could of done anything for the issues here and at the last pre-order attempt.

 

I do hope GW can do something in the future at least to combat this.

[TheArtilleryman]

At this stage what GW should do is cancel all the scalper orders and ship a handful of copies to each physical store instead. That way at least we’d know actual people got them.

[TheArtilleryman]

1 hour ago, Petitioner's City said:

 

Disgusting if true!

 

Jeez they aren’t even subtle about it are they …. 

[Balthamal]

25 minutes ago, son of the forest said:

I've not seen a large influx of copies on ebay, maybe scalpers have had their copies cancelled?

They're just waiting until they have it in hand to list, no one can do anything at that point

[son of the forest]

6 minutes ago, Balthamal said:

They're just waiting until they have it in hand to list, no one can do anything at that point

Could point, they've recently been burnt so probably being more cautious 

[Sky Potato]

Mental that the website queue is still paused at 2009 when the book sold out at 1748.

 

There are some serious IT issues at hand here. GW can't be blamed for scummy scalpers existing, but they've somehow managed to make the scalpers lives much much easier.

 

That £11 million on the new website was really well spent... 

[Kastor Krieg]

3 hours ago, Felix Antipodes said:

Whatever the reasons for this, I wouldn’t want to be in their IT section tomorrow morning…

Bold to assume they even have one.

[RWJP]

Honestly, I'm kind of baffled that people are surprised this happened.

Thinking about this logically, this outcome was obviously inevitable. There were even less products available than last time. That tiny number of product was being released worldwide at the same time. GW used the same queue system as they did before.

So, not only did you have the initial demand for rare, limited edition signed product, you had even more limited supply, you then had literally everyone worldwide hitting the website at the same time, instead of being spread out over a 24 hour period. And then the security measures were exactly the same. The fact the website ran at all is the only surprising bit to me... The weight of traffic from scalpers and literally everyone worldwide would have been like a DDoS.

At this point I think people really need to just assume that this will always be the case. Until GW invests tremendous amounts of money into anti-scalping measure, or changes it's business practices, and until people stop buying from scalpers, nothing is going to change.

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

25 minutes ago, son of the forest said:

Could point, they've recently been burnt so probably being more cautious 

No listing on ebay until the 27th and no posting success with any deets

[crimsondave]

1 hour ago, Jalleo said:

No it specifically tated cloudfront I believe. It might be a similar or specific sub product thats similar or something.

 

In all honesty I dont believe this can be blamed at GW only. Its hindsight and certainly something they can learn from (especially those that planned it). The egregious scalping by those not of the community looking at this as a money making excercise is the biggest issue. None of the instore staff for any of the outlets could of done anything for the issues here and at the last pre-order attempt.

 

I do hope GW can do something in the future at least to combat this.

I think the fact they knew the scalpers were skipping the Que and they still put the are you human test to enter the Que instead of at checkout puts most of the blame on GW.  At least make them work for it.  The scalpers literally did the exact same thing with success.