Wrath in Singapore

I don't know if I mentioned it, but there is an expansion to World of Warcraft called "Wrath of the Lich King." This expansion came out nearly 12 hours ago in the US. However, Asiasoft, the distributor of Warcraft here in Singapore, is not releasing it at the same time. We are getting it 13 hours from now, a full 24 hours after the release in the US. The pre-order system here in Singapore is entirely different from that of the system in the US. What you do here is pre-order the game at your favorite venue - we went to Challenger, an electronics store across the street in the mall. You pay in full for the game and fill out a sheet with your name and phone number on it. Then, they give you a little card.

Then you take the card to the launch event. That's right, I said "the" launch event. There is only one place to pick it up. You can pick it up any time between noon and 6pm when the event ends. The problem with this is that there are 4 million people who live in Singapore. If only, say, 2000 people want to pick it up at launch time, you will wind up with sheer chaos. Which is what happened last time, when the Burning Crusade came out. See:

People INside...

People OUTside

We went tonight to see where the launch was taking place. We got there at 9:30pm and 7 people were already online. (All horde, for what it's worth...) They will be staying there for 15 hours. Outside. The pictures above are when they held it in a mall. They're not holding it at a mall this time. Instead, it is at a gaming center - 5 floors of games. I don't think they're letting people inside, though. We saw that they have cases of water (we estimated over 3000 bottles of water) because, well, leaving 2000 people outside in the noonday sun in Singapore when the weather is supposed to be 82F and muggy (oh, and rainy) is probably a recipe for dehydration.

Anyway, Mathew is going to take the first train there. Which is 5:28am. I won't. I'll go around 9 or 10am, hopefully I can find him. If he's inside, then I won't be able to sit with him and I'll probably just go home and wait for him to come back.

Wish us luck. :-)