Arcane Power: How long before the pirated copy appears

[TheYeti1775]

I voted 2-3 days but honestly it won't suprise me to see it tonight when I go home and check the usual suspects. I didn't see it last night, so no pre-release snafu's this time at least. Though I did see every other 4e release out there. Most were thoughtfully bookmarked and everything.

 

[Cadfan]

This should have included a negative number, and should have been posted a few weeks ago. Copies of it have been available for some time in certain stores and regions.

 

[lestat2099]

Ironically, seeing someone using a copy of the pirated Character Generator -- and knowing that Arcane Power will be added to the legitimate version -- made me more interested in subscribing to the DDI.

Actually you can dowload the March patch (including PHB2) with the "pirated" character builder, that means the Arcane Power pirated patch will be available a few days after the official release...

 

[Nymrohd]

You can download pretty much everything D&D related. Cannot say I've seen Arcane Power out yet and given that it has been out in Japan for over a week that says something. But every DDI article is on the net an hour later at most. And not just WotC stuff either. I saw a Pathfinder pack the other day on Demonoid that had everything in it (and I mean everything ever in electronic format, even the latest APs).

It sure will get scanned sooner or later though. People will do anything to pimp their ratios and increase their community epeen. But I don't expect anything of the quality of an actual Ebook to ever show up for Arcane Power other WotC products until they put pdfs on the market again. If they put PDFs and not something else that uses DRM.

 

[Dr. Harry]

Gentleperson's wager...

Arcane Power came out today; how long before a scanned copy hits the torrents?

You didn't allow "yesterday" as an answer.

 

[Nifft]

How long do D&D normally take to appear on Torrents? I'm genuinely interested to know.

The Core books appeared on the 'Net several days before they were available to the public in any other way.

Cheers, -- N

 

[baberg]

Just chiming in, as I frequent a forum that often contains illicit links...

The Core books were out weeks early (as I'm sure ENWorlders remember, people started answering detailed questions about the rules weeks before the actual launch) and those were printer leaks. Somebody at the printer got the copies and posted them online.

Every book since then has been out the day it was released - usually a legally bought PDF that had the visible watermarks removed from them. That's what happened with PHB2. The first copies I saw posted still had watermarks on them by somebody who "didn't care" and then followed up about an hour later by somebody who did remove the visible watermarks. These were posted at around 3:30am Eastern, after the official PDFs were posted at 3am for download from the legit sites.

Without an official PDF it's going to take somebody buying the book, removing the binding, scanning it, (likely) OCRing it, and posting it. It's now 9:30pm Eastern and I would be surprised if it wasn't out by tomorrow at this time. Heck, it could be out somewhere now, but I'm still at work and can't check the site. But I expect tomorrow night at the latest. The pirates will always get what they want.

Please note: I have bought every 4e source book except the adventures and Forgotten Realms source books, since my game is a homebrew world.

 

[DarkMasterBR]

There will be a delay, that's for sure. There already is, because the older books were already released in launch day.

Still, they will get out, and after that happens, the pirates will be happy and Wizard will have hurt no one but the legal costumer.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I expect it to his Chat channels and Usenet within 24 hours. A week or so to get out to the major torrent sites.

 

[Derulbaskul]

I thought I read here on ENWorld that pirated copies were already out a week ago (although I could be wrong), so I voted lemon curry.

Yes I posted that last week. I didn't download it because I don't pirate but was just interested at how long before the PDF came up without the anti-piracy protections that would have allowed WotC to trace the offender....