I was thinking of various things that got me to this point, but I realised nearly every experience I've had with buying a game anywhere before well after it's release date was bad. Including several Early Access games as well.

My pre-order stories:

Borderlands:Pre-Sequel : Barely touched it since it came out, because I have nobody to play it with and the people that DID have it we lagged out of each others games instantly. Didn't seem bad on release, but was really just reskinned BL2 with a couple of extra mechanics.

Witcher 3: Won't even be able to play it due to hardware. Should have seen that coming a mile away but still.

Star Citizen: Years off still, despite what they say, and basically the same issue as above.


Early Access stories:

Starbound: Massive lag between updates, although at last this one is bittersweet because they've finally pushed their big update and it's almost worth the wait.

Edge of Space: Need to give it another go, was very, very sparse and grindy when I first tried it.

Grav: Hard to comment as I got it for free, but the devs have gone the right way and made trailers out of pure in-game content. I've definitely enjoyed what I've played so far. Just including this so I don't sound too much of a Negative Nancy.

If I've bought other Early Access titles I've not even been enthused enough to play them.


So with all that for context, does anyone out there actually have GOOD stories out of the whole pre-order hype or the Early Access bandwagon?

http://underrail.com/

Great game for older fallout fans - no issues with it so far. No major bugs etc.

other games too, but its a bit late for ke here - shall return!

Edit: had it since about two years ago on the original groupees BAGB

My first pre-order should be Dawn of War 2, it came with a T-shirt that I threw away (I feel wearing it make me look like a gangstar) but the campaign was awesome. I am a little disappointed that the RTS part of it is lousy when compared to its previous dawn of war series. It is although the devs spend all their resourses on the campaign that they hastily scrap together the RTS portion.
But I learned to accept that this is another RPG tactical game with Dawn of War name slap on to it. Man what a great single player experiance and I got my money worth.

My second pre-order is Element War of magic. The game keep on crashing after maybe 100 to 200 turns. The gameplay was fun, but tie down by bugs and dumb AI. The devs keep working at it and then improved it so much that the improvement becomes a sequel (Fallen Enchantress). They give it to the War of Magic owners free so I am still happy with my pre-order.

My other pre-order is Age of Wonder 3, kickstarter Wasteland 2, Divinity Original Sin and we know how these turned out.

Now I am waiting on my Witcher 3, Witcher Adventure, Homeworld Remastered, Pillars of Eternity kickstarter but I have faith they will turn out awesome.

I pre-ordered BioShock Infinite for 43$ along with XCOM: Enemy Unknown, BioShock and Spec Ops The Line as bonuses on launch morning after a lot of reviews and videos were out. It was my game of the year.

I've had great experience wit the vast majority of my kickstarters, in particular shadowrun, wasteland 2, D:OS, broken sword 5,... Numerous preorderers have turned out great for me before too... So, yeah...

I preordered Risen 3 since I wanted to play it as soon as it was available. And I was really happy with it, had a lot of fun and did not encounter any bugs. So nothing to complain about :-)

Why was it your GOTY? I though it reused a lot of content from Risen 2?

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

removed.

If you mean by reused content that you visited places again that were already there in Risen 2 then yes. But I consider this a good thing since I love going back to places I had visited before with new story, new quests, a changed envinronment (because it is not like the island were all still looking the same) etc. Because why the heck should the world always change to a completely different one if you play a sequel.

Release day experiences,sure being released from Prison:-)

A bit offtopic, but... I haven't played the Pre-Sequel yet (will wait for the GotY, because Borderlands DLC are just too many and too expensive), but I found Borderlands 1 and Borderlands 2 were great singleplayer games! Sure, some classes are a bit hard (or even frustrating), but classes like the Gunzerker, Commando or Mechromancer are perfect for singleplayer (Borderlands 2). The Siren was awesome in Borderlands 1, because her Phaseshift healed you, damaged the baddies and made you untouchable. And SMGs were great weapons too, with the right class mods. I'm sure the Pre-Sequel has great singleplayer classes too.

Door Kickers.
Bought on release, played, still play, enjoyed. Yeah.

WL2 is actually the only KS game I've played that I backed and it's all good.

I have!
Grim Fandango and Witcher 3. People will ask about the latter, and I'll say "free dlc" :P

DLC should always be free anyway...

And i have no good story about preorder or prerelease. Just don't do it. It sucks.