The discs take a few weeks to be printed, shipped and in the shops. During that time there's likely been several patches, and when the game client is installed it will immediately want to update. Usually the last open betas before release (which are often a week or two before the game goes public) bring a large number of patches. The client when the game goes live would already be different from the one on the disks. The more time that elapses between the disk being printed, and being used to install, the more updates there would be.

It's almost always faster to just download the newest client, than to upgrade an older one. I'm not against having a keepsake, but claiming having the disk means you get in faster is folly.

I never claimed anything, I simply stated that I know people who prefer to have the disk so they can get the core game data faster than they could through a download it ( I have friends in places where their download speed is between 1-3 mbs, poor bastards). Then they sit and wait while it patches, as I stated in my previous post, I never do disks, I download with my connection.

How about instead of discs the hard copies just be dog tags for players with their cd key inside? or even a coded cd key which can be scanned to allow download

Physical cause i want my ultra collection edition having my space marine, my legionary, me eladr and,da orks so i got somthing to look at whene i am playing

Yeah, it's not about speed. Well, not that speed. It's about DL speeds. A lot of people have shitty internet, so downloading a game is not as fast as just loading a game from a disc.

Yet again if you install a game in October 2014 and buy a hard copy its most likely that you will have to download almost the entire game patched in October 2015. Now what is nice in those hard boxes is official soundtrack, custom book or some trinket.

Why no option for both? Personally I'd only get hardcopy if it came with special goodies (music, books, trinkets, shinies...).

yes arwork book, the black library novel etc etc

that would be awesome and would make me think about buying hard copy. But just the game in hard copy is just one more plastic case in on my book shelf

I love having the physical cases and all the booklets inside, granted most of the time these will come from collectors editions but i think a release of both would be the best option.