The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

[Rich Yung Stars]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

How do you like 2k10?

Is pretty good they improved a lot game looks great but it cant top the show..

[dvazquez190]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

I said the same thing when I played the demo for 360.

[CubFan23]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

no Only 2k 10

How is the MLB today feature?

[Blzer]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

Okay, I'm finally back from what was perhaps the dumbest day of my life. Let's recap:



3:30 AM - Wake up to work at the front desk in my residence hall for two hours.

6:15 AM - Pick up my friend as we go to McDonald's for breakfast before I take him to the airport. Then go home, shower, and finish some homework.

9:00 AM - Only class of the day. I'm prepared to go up north after class.

10:00 AM - Attempt to withdraw $600 from my bank account to find out there's a day limit, so I head to a bank to get another $200 out as the $400 wasn't enough for the eight people I was also getting the game for. I also have a "second breakfast".

11:00 AM - I head out for LA. All seems good.

11:30 AM - I get tipped that places may not get it in today. Yet I persist... almost instantly after, I hit dead-stopped traffic. I mean literally, dead-stopped. I even ended up having a conversation with the car next to me, as all four of them first thought I was Tiger Woods. Turns out there was a grenade in the road or something, closing both ways. We were turned off the freeway eventually. That took an hour.

1:30 PM - I finally reach my destination. I ask them about the games, they say come back around 3:00. I take a 45 minute nap in my car, then come back and peruse the swap meet (too sketch).


3:00 - 4:30 PM

Here's the meat of the story, and the explanation for everything. So I finally go back to the little gaming hut and talk to the very kind woman working there, and she said (in her nice accent) that she needs to wait on a call from the person she gets her products from, who gets it from the wholesale distributors in the general LA area. If she gets word for games, she has her husband pick them up from the supplier. There's another small gaming store in there as well that flat-out said, "Monday," but they have to close down their place to pick up their shipments because there is only one guy that works there.

Anyway, I make small-talk with her and ask how this place is run, if she has regular customers and such, if she knows every game in her kiosk (which she does), which games she plays, etc. Then her husband comes and delivers food, and he makes one last call, confirming that they indeed wouldn't be getting in the games today, and instead Monday.

Here's his explanation: So basically, Modern Warfare 2 was a pretty hard stomp on Gamestop's foot as they had a lot of canceled pre-orders based on somehow nabbing games early (a lot of people here could probably attest to such a statement, including myself). Sony and Microsoft are able to target where certain people play online by whatever kind of demographics tracker they use to show who is online for what game, and what it showed was the thousands (yes, thousands) of people in Los Angeles that were already playing the game before Monday. This was a cause of concern for the parties involved, and the wholesale distributors (primarily in LA) were getting in trouble.

As a result, no one (and I mean no one) is given any copies of games from the warehouses, especially these smaller places that sell it early. They won't risk selling these games at $1, $2, or even $3 a title just to get in trouble again with any game that can connect online, this includes The Show and 2K10. The store got a game like Heavy Rain early, but that's because it isn't online. No harm this way. But then meanwhile, the basic premise of this is that no matter how many copies of the game and what asking price, they weren't going to sell any to retailers until Monday. Now remember, this is only for wholesale. Obviously other retailers have their own shippers, so they already have the game but won't sell it until Tuesday. Everywhere else, especially LA, will not sell a single copy until Monday.

Then the guy explained how companies may start coding their games to track the location of where discs are bought in case they are bought early, should this kind of business continue where Gamestop isn't getting their reserves. He even went on to explain how Sony is going the route that Nintendo did with the Wii and keeping supply low for higher demand, so that sometimes we'll even be hard-pressed to find PS3 games in stores unless we get them as early as possible. I don't really know what this had to do with the overall story, but that's what he was saying.

I know there is much more to say about it as the guy talked with me for over an hour, but that's the gist of it, and it's why you're not going to find the game until Monday, most unfortunately. He apologized to me for getting my hopes up as I explained how I was getting the game(s) for many of my friends, and I completely forgave him as they are nowhere close to blame. I headed out around 4:30 or a bit later and made my trek on home.

4:30 - 5:00 PM - I made phone calls to everyone's number that I have, apologizing to them and explaining the situation that I just explained above. I asked one of them to post this on OS, which I'm guessing he did. There is some moderate traffic getting out of LA.

5:00 - 6:00 PM - Heavy traffic for the most part. I take a nice quick road where I unfortunately had to pay a toll booth fee of $5.50 as a price. Then there was very heavy traffic to the point that I had to get off this main freeway (the same one with the grenade on it from earlier), and found the first east freeway to look for the next south freeway.

6:00 - 7:30 PM

It turned out to be the dumbest mistake I could have made. Instead of doing this:




I ended up doing this:





That may not look like much of a difference, but in total it ended up being an hour's difference. One is an actual freeway, the other is a 55 MPH road that has dozens of traffic lights and single lanes, and apparently is a very popular road at that time of night. For the longest time, I thought I was going out to the desert. I thought I was lost. Once I got off the "freeway", turns out I was still the same number of miles away from San Diego that I was before, if not more (and I was on that road for about 40 - 45 minutes).

I finally pulled in at 7:30 PM. I think my front tire is messed up too, it was moving wonky the whole trip. I'm so glad I didn't break down on that one trippy freeway. This was the worst trip ever, and I don't even get anything out of it. I filled up my gas tank only to be near empty again, and paid a $5.50 toll booth fee when... well, when that's just damn expensive.

Most of all, I wasted 8 1/2 hours of the day doing pretty much nothing but driving and hanging out in a ghetto section of the greater Los Angeles area. Not to mention that I couldn't stick to my promise of delivering The Show to you great OS members. I tried very hard in making sure that I was there all day in case it would ever come. I even stuck through the dead-stopped traffic instead of turning around and going home then and there, as being on that freeway hill with a stick-shift was just dreadful.

With that, I apologize that I couldn't come through. EG and countryboy, I know that I made a huge vow to get your games, but in the end it was all for naught. I'm really sorry, and I just hope that we can all have our games by Tuesday.

I gotta eat.

[ty5oke]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

Damn Blzer. That sounds like one heck of a day you had yourself. Good man to be that persistent, but too bad it was all for naught.

[franch1se]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

that detour you made wasn't my fault was it? I apologize if it was.

[Blzer]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

that detour you made wasn't my fault was it? I apologize if it was.

Nope, you said 78 but I mistook it for 76.

[rock85]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

Okay, I'm finally back from what was perhaps the dumbest day of my life. Let's recap:



3:30 AM - Wake up to work at the front desk in my residence hall for two hours.

6:15 AM - Pick up my friend as we go to McDonald's for breakfast before I take him to the airport. Then go home, shower, and finish some homework.

9:00 AM - Only class of the day. I'm prepared to go up north after class.

10:00 AM - Attempt to withdraw $600 from my bank account to find out there's a day limit, so I head to a bank to get another $200 out as the $400 wasn't enough for the eight people I was also getting the game for. I also have a "second breakfast".

11:00 AM - I head out for LA. All seems good.

11:30 AM - I get tipped that places may not get it in today. Yet I persist... almost instantly after, I hit dead-stopped traffic. I mean literally, dead-stopped. I even ended up having a conversation with the car next to me, as all four of them first thought I was Tiger Woods. Turns out there was a grenade in the road or something, closing both ways. We were turned off the freeway eventually. That took an hour.

1:30 PM - I finally reach my destination. I ask them about the games, they say come back around 3:00. I take a 45 minute nap in my car, then come back and peruse the swap meet (too sketch).


3:00 - 4:30 PM

Here's the meat of the story, and the explanation for everything. So I finally go back to the little gaming hut and talk to the very kind woman working there, and she said (in her nice accent) that she needs to wait on a call from the person she gets her products from, who gets it from the wholesale distributors in the general LA area. If she gets word for games, she has her husband pick them up from the supplier. There's another small gaming store in there as well that flat-out said, "Monday," but they have to close down their place to pick up their shipments because there is only one guy that works there.

Anyway, I make small-talk with her and ask how this place is run, if she has regular customers and such, if she knows every game in her kiosk (which she does), which games she plays, etc. Then her husband comes and delivers food, and he makes one last call, confirming that they indeed wouldn't be getting in the games today, and instead Monday.

Here's his explanation: So basically, Modern Warfare 2 was a pretty hard stomp on Gamestop's foot as they had a lot of canceled pre-orders based on somehow nabbing games early (a lot of people here could probably attest to such a statement, including myself). Sony and Microsoft are able to target where certain people play online by whatever kind of demographics tracker they use to show who is online for what game, and what it showed was the thousands (yes, thousands) of people in Los Angeles that were already playing the game before Monday. This was a cause of concern for the parties involved, and the wholesale distributors (primarily in LA) were getting in trouble.

As a result, no one (and I mean no one) is given any copies of games from the warehouses, especially these smaller places that sell it early. They won't risk selling these games at $1, $2, or even $3 a title just to get in trouble again with any game that can connect online, this includes The Show and 2K10. The store got a game like Heavy Rain early, but that's because it isn't online. No harm this way. But then meanwhile, the basic premise of this is that no matter how many copies of the game and what asking price, they weren't going to sell any to retailers until Monday. Now remember, this is only for wholesale. Obviously other retailers have their own shippers, so they already have the game but won't sell it until Tuesday. Everywhere else, especially LA, will not sell a single copy until Monday.

Then the guy explained how companies may start coding their games to track the location of where discs are bought in case they are bought early, should this kind of business continue where Gamestop isn't getting their reserves. He even went on to explain how Sony is going the route that Nintendo did with the Wii and keeping supply low for higher demand, so that sometimes we'll even be hard-pressed to find PS3 games in stores unless we get them as early as possible. I don't really know what this had to do with the overall story, but that's what he was saying.

I know there is much more to say about it as the guy talked with me for over an hour, but that's the gist of it, and it's why you're not going to find the game until Monday, most unfortunately. He apologized to me for getting my hopes up as I explained how I was getting the game(s) for many of my friends, and I completely forgave him as they are nowhere close to blame. I headed out around 4:30 or a bit later and made my trek on home.

4:30 - 5:00 PM - I made phone calls to everyone's number that I have, apologizing to them and explaining the situation that I just explained above. I asked one of them to post this on OS, which I'm guessing he did. There is some moderate traffic getting out of LA.

5:00 - 6:00 PM - Heavy traffic for the most part. I take a nice quick road where I unfortunately had to pay a toll booth fee of $5.50 as a price. Then there was very heavy traffic to the point that I had to get off this main freeway (the same one with the grenade on it from earlier), and found the first east freeway to look for the next south freeway.

6:00 - 7:30 PM

It turned out to be the dumbest mistake I could have made. Instead of doing this:




I ended up doing this:





That may not look like much of a difference, but in total it ended up being an hour's difference. One is an actual freeway, the other is a 55 MPH road that has dozens of traffic lights and single lanes, and apparently is a very popular road at that time of night. For the longest time, I thought I was going out to the desert. I thought I was lost. Once I got off the "freeway", turns out I was still the same number of miles away from San Diego that I was before, if not more (and I was on that road for about 40 - 45 minutes).

I finally pulled in at 7:30 PM. I think my front tire is messed up too, it was moving wonky the whole trip. I'm so glad I didn't break down on that one trippy freeway. This was the worst trip ever, and I don't even get anything out of it. I filled up my gas tank only to be near empty again, and paid a $5.50 toll booth fee when... well, when that's just damn expensive.

Most of all, I wasted 8 1/2 hours of the day doing pretty much nothing but driving and hanging out in a ghetto section of the greater Los Angeles area. Not to mention that I couldn't stick to my promise of delivering The Show to you great OS members. I tried very hard in making sure that I was there all day in case it would ever come. I even stuck through the dead-stopped traffic instead of turning around and going home then and there, as being on that freeway hill with a stick-shift was just dreadful.

With that, I apologize that I couldn't come through. EG and countryboy, I know that I made a huge vow to get your games, but in the end it was all for naught. I'm really sorry, and I just hope that we can all have our games by Tuesday.

I gotta eat.

Yo Blzer you are one of a kind LOL

[bkrich83]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

The moral of his story is Gamestop is f'ing it up for all of us.

[DodgerFanatic2K3]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

I also drove 51 miles to L.A. with the hope that my spot would get the game in their 5 p.m. shipment and to find out that they only received 2K10

The guy pretty much assured me that it would be there early Mon afternoon so I still decided to pay it off in full to make sure that I get a copy and make my trip to L.A. worthwhile

I did at least get to play it tonight at Best Buy on the way back so I felt a little better

[Rob_NYY]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

Can we please not quote Blzer's Odyssey anymore? I almost got carpal tunnel scrolling down this page.

[bigdaddykraven]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

Charlotte, North Carolina? Anyone know of any mom and pop stores in the area or places that have it already? Girlfriend is sick, suddenly the wait until Tuesday seems very long!

[EL_GABE]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

for the ppl wating on the long beach store they aint having it till monday =( o well more modern warfare 2 for me..add me!!

[Dodgersnlakers109]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

yea man i hit up all my LA spots and long beach i got nothin In LA

[BZito75]

Re: The *Official* When and Where Thread (READ THE RULES)

for the guys in the new york city area.... lets all try to get in touch with each other through pm tomarra n maybe each call a few stores n relay the info back to each other.... jesus god this game has us all cracked out n i wouldnt have it any other way....

i cant sleep lol my fiance thinks im crazy but shes the one thats crazy