Pre-ordering has the illusion of value. When you pre-order chances are it gets you into the game before others and with extra stuff to boot. That could be an advantage that could snowball. Or atleast that is one of the rationalizations that can be made. Saldy, even assuming that is true, it wouldn’t matter since the game tends to be shit/unplayable at launch.

The pre-orders that technically are worth anything are those that give physical baubles/items that could contain value to some individuals. But right now? yeah pre-orders are scams.

But speaking personally now, the feelings can be so damn strong that you create “logical” reasons to pre-order and then end up lamenting at the idiocy or full commit to sunk cost fallacy.

The biggest issue with pre-ordering is the gaming community itself tbh. Even if an individual knows better intellectually, companies have people specialized to make advertising as engaging as possible. Most of us (I used to be one of them) simply do not have the tools, nor the idea, of how to mentally combat “hype trains” and thus get our expectations up praying that the game will come out good and satisfy us for a bit.