Remember all of the absurdity about World of Warcraft‘s collector’s edition with Warlords of Draenor? That was ridiculous. Basically, if you wanted to pre-order the collector’s edition for the physical goodies but also wanted the digital goodies, you had to buy the expansion twice and then ask customer service to disassociate your “extra” key from your account so you could… hand it to someone else. Pretty ridiculous, but at least the developers learned a lesson and wouldn’t do that again for Legion, right?
By “wouldn’t do that again” we of course mean “did exactly that again without a trace of irony.”
Yes, if you want all of the digital goodies for the Collector’s Edition and early access to the Demon Hunter class, you will have to buy the game digitally. If you want that and the physical edition, you’re going to have to buy both and hope that you have a friend in dire need of the expansion code after the fact. Player response to this has been… well, exactly as positive as you’d expect.