What about us poor across the pond?

The last week there has been a multitude of big announcements about WAR. I have remained cool about them all... no, that's actually a lie. I have become more and more furious, because none of them affect me. I didn't pre-order a Collector's Edition in time here in Europe, so I was left standing with a bitter taste in my mouth and only hope of another way to get into Open Beta and Head Start.

When it was announced that the OB and HS features from CE would be included in the pre-order Standard Edition as well, I rejoiced. For one minute. Then I read the last of the announcements that went something like "oh and by the way, EU SE doesn't get Open Beta". For all CE buyers, it was like the End of the World.

With the latest announcement, the pre-orders will be getting a "Preview Weekend", and the CE owners will get priority in. From the sound of it, it seems it will be held before Open Beta, and it will likely be a stress test. What that means is instability, random disconnects, downtimes, and general frustration. But people who get to play the game for the first time, even if it's just a quick taste, can be forgiving.

The CE will also be getting one additional day on Head Start, and let into the Closed Beta. And suddenly all the CE owners have grown strangely quiet. Was it really that long ago since they were shouting and screaming about the value of their CE? Normally I would say that they took something with one hand and gave something back with the other, but they never said some of the features in CE were CE exclusive. It was just people who were unable to comprehend what they were reading.

And speaking of reading comprehension, I find the phrasing in the latest announcement amusing. If many people had trouble with the phrasing of CE's features, how many will not misapprehend this?

Regarding the pre-order, Collector’s Edition and the Standard Edition, we are extending the Head Start for the pre-order CE (not the SE) buyers by at least an additional day

Regarding the pre-order, Collector’s Edition and the Standard Edition, we are pleased to announce that we will also be inviting our pre-order CE buyers into our Closed Beta test starting next week

Why do they even have "and the Standard Edition" in those sentences? It would have been perfectly fine if they had just begun the sentences with "Regarding the pre-order, we are..." I interpreted that the SE would also receive these benefits until I read the sentence again.

But after all these announcements, I have yet to see an explanation to why the EU pre-order SE will not get into the Open Beta. Until I receive an explanation, I will file this under "GOA f*ck up". The game hasn’t even started yet, and I already hate that company. As if the crappy website and even crappier updates wouldn’t be enough.

GOA of course blame Mythic, so I don't use the Finger of Blame with full force until I see exactly who's fault it is.
IanC had this to say on Freddy's House:

I don't know yet what the situation for the EU will be regarding this. To be honest this announcement was a surprise to us as well and so we'll need to talk to Mythic, our other partners and our various internal teams to see what is possible under the circumstances. The timetable we were working to appears to have changed dramatically so we'll need to re-evaluate a lot of things and look at where our resources are at the moment. It's Mythic's prerogative to change things - in fact there have been many changes prior to this that we've worked through together - we just need to see if it's possible to adapt our plans to bring things back into line again. As always our intention will be to try and give the same opportunities to European fans as Mythic give to NA fans but we need to see if it is possible to shuffle our timetable to match given the fact that everything is pretty much committed at the moment to gearing up for launch.

I expect we'll be able to announce what we will be doing for the European fans within the next few days.