Collector's Editions: Worth It?

[Morreion]

Collector's Editions: Worth It? (MMORPG.com)

I am guilty of purchasing the $75 edition of World of Warcraft at launch, and I even shelled out an extra $10 for Auto Assault a long time ago in order to get a cheap pair of headphones (with a mic) because I needed a new pair and they seemed decent enough on my budget. I bought the CE for WAR, Age of Conan, LotRO, and others. I bought one for Hellgate: London for crying out loud. But now that I look back on them all, I’m wondering if they were ever actually worth the extra money spent.

I've bought one collectors edition- for Vanguard In general, I purchase game downloads through Steam now, so I'm not buying any physical editions anymore, that solves the problem for me

[dotty]

I only bought one, Warhammer. I was so sure Mythic was going to do an awesome job with WAR. <sighs> What a let down.

[Rakul]

Aion and Warhammer.

The former, I blame Morreion and the latter, Regolyth! hahaha Just kidding, of course!

[Morreion]

Hey! I only accept blame for Vanguard!

[Rakul]

Drat! Hmmm... I guess I'll have to blame Oatik then!

[Oatik]

I only buy the CE if it comes with an action figure, then I set them up outside like garden gnomes. Ok, that's not true, but I dare to dream...I'd set them up just in my yard to watch over my neighbor...maybe I've gone off topic here!

[Regolyth]

I love collector's editions. However, I only buy a CE if it's truly worth it. In my opinion, good CEs are only found in about 50% of the ones out there. I think that the best CEs are the ones with soundtracks, art books, something unique to the game, and some type of in-game item.

A lot of CEs come with some type of book, an in-game item, and then either a comic, soundtrack or figurine. That seems to be the standard these days (from my observation). The books are generally not worth it, the comics are rushed, the figurines aren't that great, and the in-game item is just so-so.

My favorite CE of all time has to be the recent one with StarCraft II. It had a huge, hard bound, full color art book, printed on some really nice paper. The book wasn't just sloppily thrown together, but was really nice and informative. It also came with a soundtrack, and if anyone here plays Blizzard games, then you know they have awesome scores. It also came with a decent comic book and a highly detailed box. It also had a behind the scenes DVD that was pretty long, and really well shot.

The SC2 CE also had the coolest item I have ever seen in a CE... the main character's dog tags, and the dog tag was a 2GB USB drive with original StarCraft, and expansion, preloaded onto it. It's awesome. The dog tags are also highly detailed (they are from a space marine, so it's not like your usual military dog tags), and it lights up when plugged into your driver.

My second favorite CE was the one with Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. The exclusive miniature it came with is awesome, especially for fans of the Warhammer table top game. It also had a really nice art book (almost as good as the SC2 one), and a few more gadgets. Other notable CEs are World of Warcraft and Diablo II.