You Had Me at “Hello,” but Lost Me at “Out of Stock.”

Debit card in hand, I refreshed the page with every passing minute. Price gouging be damned, the limited edition gunmetal grey PlayStation 3 would be mine. As my friends and family predicted, it wasn’t. Over the course of three early-morning hours, server-side difficulties crippled months of anticipation throttled by Sony’s nonchalant “oh, hai” method of marketing, and it never returned.

Porn for the “true” Metal Gear Solid fan.

A few days later, the opportunity to purchase the console rose again, but I didn’t care. I had realized the folly of my impulsive nature: “$200 for a different paint job,” I thought. “I must’ve been crazy.” Realistically, I was.

The same situation reared its desirable yet wallet-draining head just a couple of months later. Amazon and Gamestop started accepting pre-orders for the collector’s edition of Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion to World of Warcraft. As an admitted addict of the social MMO with a love for unnecessary…”stuff” related to my favorite franchises, getting the vanilla version was not an option. Besides, what would my guildmates say if their leader, of all people, didn’t even have a baby frost wyrm?

Even Lewis Skolnick agrees this is a big deal.

After two days of being on sale, the collector’s edition was no longer available from Amazon and GameStop. Once again, I found myself without a pre-order, but it was my fault this time. Procrastination got the best of me. Sure, more became available a few days later, but by then I had already convinced myself it wasn’t worth the extra thirty clams. The vanilla won’t taste as good in a few months, but my wallet will feel fatter and I’ll feel less like my tchotchkie-hording otaku peers. Darn nerds.

Oh, who am I kidding. I’m a card-carrying member…sometimes.

This entry was posted by Kyle Stallock on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 6:09 pm and is filed under Gaming, Multimedia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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