Here's When, Exactly, The Division Comes Out

Even as an old fogey, I'm interested in knowing precisely when The New Hotness will unlock and let me play. This might've once been so I could plan a night heavy on caffeine and light on sleep, but now it's just nice to know if I'll get to play an hour or create my character before I take my mint tea to bed.

Pre-loading for the next New Hotness, Tom Clancy's The Division [official site], starts tomorrow on PC and Ubisoft have explained when they'll let folks into the virus-trashed New York City around its March 8th launch. Bad news for the UK, I'm afraid.

In a blog post about the launch, Ubisoft explain that folks who've pre-ordered digital copies can preload the game from 9am PST tomorrow on Steam and Uplay (see this for when that is in your time zone). Yeah yeah, I know, "never pre-order", but maybe you were one of the 6.4 million folks who played in the beta and you dug it - I don't know you, man. And isn't it nice to know that I have your back even if you do ignore my advice?

Should you somehow manage to receive a physical copy before the game's official release, servers will actually be live from 12:01am Australian Eastern Daylight time on March 8th - which is on March 7th for most of the world.

If you've got it digitally (who even buys discs on PC any more?) on Steam or Uplay, your game won't unlock until 12:01am EST. If we consult our handy time zone converter again, we see that's 5:01am GMT for on the 8th for the UK but earlier in the evening of the 7th for more westerly parts of North America.

This forum post from an Ubisoft community manager seems to confirm that no, Europe won't get a regional midnight digital launch of our own.

Does this make sense? I've lost all track of what time and times mean. Is time even real, maaan? What if what I think is time moving forwards is time moving backwards to you, duuude? What if what I think is 7pm looks blue to you? No way of knowing, man, no way of knowing.

Ubi also say you shouldn't expect reviews at launch - or that anything claiming to be a review is gash. "Since it's impossible for us to populate the servers in a way that would adequately replicate playing The Division on launch day, reviewers will start playing the game along with everyone else when it's released," they say.

Until then, hey, read what Adam thought when he had played a preview build of the real-world shooter RPG, and check out his interview with the creative director too.