Illium was released last year in Summer (BioWare Online Store via BioWare.com) - edit: June, 23rd according to a posting of Mr. Priestly on the boards. Citadel was released last year in November (EA Store). The new store - operated by Treehouse - started the week ME2 was released with the Citadel being available.
And I still speak of Illium. Because that one also was announced on the forums (the original BioWare forums). I agree with Damsel in a way that I rarely checked the old store because they mainly had guy shirts. But I checked it again - just to look if there was something new (I usually check links in my Favorites once a month for non-working links/closed sites) and... was lucky. (The shipping to Germany hasn't changed much since then. It was 24.95 USD then, it's ~30 USD now for USPS Priority.)
Citadel was up for ages before the ME2 release, because international customers couldn't use the EA Store and because others didn't want to (didn't remember Citadel...) - that's the impression I got. In my opinion, the overall hype really started when Citadel sold out quickly after the release, and it's gotten worse since. Would be interesting to know how many percents of the customers today are internationals.
edit:
Chris Priestly posts info on new ME2 merchandise on 23rd June 2009
Modifié par stardazzled, 05 octobre 2010 - 08:17 .