Strategy Informer  

Bloody spam bots *stamp...deleted*!
Right, that's out of the way. I'd quite like the XP boost, though that's not necessary, but the rest is pretty much junk (IMO). No pre-order incentives for this war weary combatant.

Yeah I mean come on - the incentive to pre-orders have to be something other than a game that you more or less certainly as a fan already owns... More in game items - the first one or two DLC's for free or something. Come one. Even a voucher for a game of your choice by THQ with a 75% discount would be better...

I will check the other on-line sites for a cheaper code on this one...

Preordering online just doesn't make sense without bribes. Even in retail outlets, where the premise is that you might not get a copy on release if you do not preorder, it's pretty much BS except for collector's editions, but online downloads cannot run out of stock.

This new Tiered approach is interesting. I wonder how genuine it is. I would guess that the idea is that, having been bribed into preordering, you then coerce your buddies into preordering also, to better your chances of getting more rewards. For me it's a disincentive to preorder early. Were I the kind of person to preorder, or even buy games at full cost on day one, I would wait and see if the tier I wanted was unlocked just before release. I sort of suspect that all of these tiered preorder setups will meet tier3 - they don't reveal the number requirements, so they can change those at any time.

Publishers and retailers like preorders because it gives them your money earlier. It is an interest free loan. For the publisher, this generally comes at the tightest financial pinch during development, so it's quite a boon. Like any interest free loan, the benefit is greater the earlier you get it. In that regard I think there's a better approach to preorder tiers.

What they should do is start with all tiers unlocked, then eliminate tiers the closer you get to the release date. That rewards the people who provide you the biggest benefit, encourages early adoption rather than wait-and-see, and will still have people telling their friends so that they can choose to preorder and not miss the extra bribes.

Just makes more sense to me that way.

It depends on what you're buying the game for, though Relic have made their MP focus abundantly clearer with each new "DoW II" EP. I played very little "CoH" MP, though it was quite a lot of fun (if not taken too seriously, as it was by many).
I am more interested in the SP, as I daresay many others are as well, so these "incentives" won't wash, despite having bought most "CoH" and "DoW" titles on release day, or shortly after it. There were some nice incentives for "DoW II-Retribution CE" pre-order.
*sigh* No more pre-ordering nor launch day purchases for me anymore (new car to pay off).

@Hammerjinx, the lock down pre-order tiers was what BioWare did with DragonAge 2 - it was just that they got so hungry for pre-orders so they added more and more later on and let everyone in on it so you didn't get anything from making a pre-order well ahead of time- you were not special, you were not like the kickstarter one who started it and got a bonus for that you were just a big walking wallet so for me - I just skipped in on my pre-order well ahead of time and bought it as cheap as I could just for the heckuvit - and well, boy was I glad I did with that crappy game....

I believe that pre-orders in tiers where you get goodies for being plenty of people is a nice incentive - as long as the pre-order bonuses makes sense...