For both Diablo III and Star Wars: The Old Republic over here there was a huge difference between pre-order price and retail price: 60 Euro compared to 40 Euro. Thus I didn't pre-order Guild Wars 2 for 55 Euro. But it turns out the difference is less for GW2, the retail version still cost 50 Euro, just 5 Euro less than pre-order.

While I would still prefer that the download version is *cheaper* than the retail version, I can understand the marketing reasons which prevent that. No company wants to piss off the retailers. Given that, I find 5 Euro difference not so bad. Now if I could only know in advance what the retail price will be, and then I could make a decision of whether to buy a pre-order or not for the next game.