Sega’s new Warhammer preorder is a total rip off
By: Ryan (@henchman34)
Creative Assembly, or more likely SEGA, is once again holding consumers’ wallets hostage with a controversial preorder DLC. This time, it’s with the new Chaos Warrior Race pack for Total War: Warhammer. With the worldwide release date of Total War: Warhammer set for April 28, 2016, comes the tide of new preorders and preorder offers. There’s only one problem. Creative Assembly’s idea of encouraging preorders, is offering a relatively large portion of the game to early buyers, despite that many fans believe the content should be shipped on release. Needless to say, this announcement of the Chaos Warrior race pack has made waves among the Total War community.
Usually, announcing additional content as incentive to preorder a game is a fairly normal sight. But many fans (including myself) believe that the additional content oversteps its bounds. For Warhammer fans, excluding such an important and diverse race such as the Chaos Warriors from the base game, is… basically heretical. Total War: Warhammer is only boasting four races on release. There are only a dozen races within the Warhammer universe, with the Chaos Warriors being one of the more popular races. Coupled with the fact that the longevity of Total War games comes from its variety of races, it’s easy to see why so many fans feel short changed over this deal.
This move should probably not come as a surprise. Previous titles within the Total War franchise have always had preorder incentives tacked to them. Total War: Shogun 2 included the earliest preorder deal that I could recall. A reasonable offer of in game currency and a historical battle, served more as icing on the cake at the time. Nothing earth shattering. The real troubles began with Total War: Rome II’s, Greek State culture pack preorder. This deal essentially made three of the Greek factions of Rome II, (Athens, Sparta, and Epirus) free for those who preordered the game. Those that didn’t preorder had to buy the content as DLC, priced at 7.99$. And that’s not even mentioning the underwhelming reception that Rome II received on release. Unsurprisingly, the money grabbing continued into 2015 with Creative Assembly’s next game, Total War: Atilla. Mirroring Rome II’s, preceding deal of an initial Steam discount of 25% off (varying from retailer), the Viking-themed race pack was included for preorders. While still pretty upsetting, buyers like myself simply rolled our eyes. This time Creative Assembly/Sega have taken preorder deals too far. What has been a minor drawback for many over the years, has now become a major point of contention for all fans.
It’s unlikely that Creative Assembly or SEGA will budge on this decision, based on their track record. Furthermore, this deal raises questions on how polished Total War: Warhammer will turn out. Warhammer is Creative Assembly’s most ambitious project yet. Gameplay footage of the game glimpses a very promising product. Creative Assembly has painstakingly brought the Warhammer franchise to life in a way that I imagine few developers could. Yet time and time again, we’ve seen numerous games in the Total War series suffer from major bugs, hiccups, and performance issues on release. If Total War: Warhammer is to truly stand apart from its predecessors, these issues will have to be thoroughly addressed before release, not after.
It’s hard to say how Creative Assembly will respond to these pressing issues. At best, the preorder deal will be revised, and the game will release smoothly. At worst the player base will be flat out ignored, leaving us wondering where things went wrong. But who knows? Square Enix’s preorder campaign for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was recently cancelled after a, “resounding amount of negative feedback”. With enough pressure from the Total War community, there may be just enough power to change the outcome of this deal.