No Shortage of The Burning Crusade

At least not in Santa Clara County California.

I drove over to Fry’s in Sunnyvale at 11:30am to get a case for a new cell phone and to see what the supply situation was for The Burning Crusade.

I wish they would let people take pictures in the store, because I could have shown the huge piles of copies right where you walk into the store.  A 50″ project TV was next to that display running the demo reel for the expansion.  Walking around the store I counted no less than four pallets of boxes on the sales floor in addition to the shipper displays that were around the store.

If no place else was, Fry’s was ready for the launch of The Burning Crusade.

In the presence of so many copies, I weakened and picked up a copy for myself at the full retail price of $39.99.  I’ll be pissed at myself if the price goes down in the next few weeks.  Given how many copies there were in the store, that might happen.

When I checked out of the store, the cashier laughed when he saw the box.  He explained that people had been lining up since Sunday to get their copy of the game while here I was at 10 minutes to noon on the big day and I just walked in and picked up a copy.

I did not see anybody else walking out with a copy either.  I compare this to the biggest sales day I have ever seen at Fry’s, the day when the original Star Wars Trilogy came out on DVD.  On that day there was an ant-like stream of young-to-middle-aged men walking into the store, to bins in the DVD section that frantic employees kept refilling, and then snaking into line at the cashiers, all with the very same item in their hands.

How did stock look by you?  Did you get a copy?

Burning Crusade Eve

How did you spend your Burning Crusade Eve?  Were you huddled around the fireplace after your Burning Crusade Eve dinner reading aloud from “The Night Before The Expansion?” 

Or were you standing out in zero degree temperature, in ice and snow, at midnight to pick up your copy of The Burning Crusade?  At least one friend of mine was out doing that, two time zones ahead of me, and was instant messaging me at 10:30pm Pacific time that he had the box in the frozen claw that was once his hand.

I actually used the evening to get Blintz to level 40 and get his mount, a big fluffy white goat.

We ended up Scarlet Monastery on Saturday night with me about half way to 39. 

On Sunday I managed to find the time to get myself from that point to about a third of the way into 39.

I also managed to get my enchanting skill up to 200.  I used up all my supplies in the bank, plus some more generously donated by Skronk, to get myself from 155 to 200.  That was a lot of enchanting, but I want to get to 225 and start saving up for the instance run required to train beyond that point.

One benefit, in fact the immediate driving reason, of getting to 200 is that I can do a standard weapon enchant that gives me a glowing weapon.  Beast slaying gave us nice red glows, but I would rather have +3 damage on everything than +5 damage against animals.  So here I am with my new glowing daggers.  There is also an orange tabby cat in the picture.  My daughter was on my lap while I was playing on Sunday, and she saw somebody else with a cat, so I had to get one as well.

Which brings us to last night, when I got on and did quests in Stranglethorn Vale until I hit 40.  I actually managed to hit 40 and get friendly reputation with Booty Bay on the same quest turn-in.  Go me.

Then I ran around, trained up my rogue skills (safe fall! woot!) and then blew my remaining cash on a big, furry goat.

A happy Burning Crusade Eve for me.