Despite being pulled from STEAM and moved to the Epic store pre orders are higher then the Division 1. UPlay is seeing a big increase. 

https://twitter.com/DomsPlaying/status/1096097649319661568?s=19

I pre-ordered the gold Edition, which costs 100€. Since I got 14xx gold coins, I used 100 gold coins for a 20% discount on any purchase. So, I paid for the gold edition only 80€. And additional to that, Ubisoft gave me one of the 3 games for free: Watchdogs 2, Ghost Recon Wildlands and Far Cry Primal. Since I already got Watchdogs 2, I went for Far Cry Primal. Not the best choices… but ok.

Edit: Since Uplay is a necessity to play Ubisoft games on Steam, I had no issue in buying it on Uplay. I can still link the game to the Steam library.. so... 

Not surprising as there is a demo which requires a pre-order, right? Knowing how similar PC game demos go, a lot of those pre-orders will be canceled.

No, that's incorrect. 

There was an alpha and a private beta in which I both participated and none of those required a pre-order of the game. There is or will be an open beta for everyone to join also without any pre-orders. 

Taken from Ubisoft UK's support webpage. It looks like you have a 'chance' at the the private beta but why take a chance when you could pre-order and then cancel it? And it looks like the public/free beta wasn't announced until after the private beta was over, so there was no way of knowing it'd exist.

Accessing the Private Beta

QUESTION:

How do I get access to the Private Beta for Tom Clancy’s The Division 2? 

ANSWER:

Players who pre-order Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 will get access to the Private Beta of the game, which will be available from February 7th 2019 at 10am CET to February 11th 2019 at 10am CET. The Private Beta is available on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

You can also register for a chance to play in the Private Beta on the official The Division 2 website. Invites to registered players will be sent based on the available space. If you are looking for more information about friend invites, please visit this article.

Seems I was one of the lucky ones. 

 I have actually platinumed FC Primal, Wildlands and WD2. I'd rank them Watch Dogs > Wildlands > Primal but I enjoyed them all. 

Almost makes you wonder why.

I want to wonder why a thread like this exists, but I know as to why it does regardless.

While you're here do you want to give your opinion on the topic at hand? 

Don't you mean "while you were here"?, this isn't an instant messaging board after all.

This also isn't a mod board, thus no backseating.