Tickets are all gone for fan fest

I read on reddit someone called showclix and was told was told that "they will not be getting any more tickets issued for the event by SE, and they sold all available tickets with no plans to sell or reissue any tickets sold already. They also said any issue with access codes needs to be taken up directly with SE, as they just use SE's software, and all of that is handled by SE directly."

I can't say for sure this is true but it does worry me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ranetsu-Akagane

I read on reddit someone called showclix and was told was told that "they will not be getting any more tickets issued for the event by SE, and they sold all available tickets with no plans to sell or reissue any tickets sold already. They also said any issue with access codes needs to be taken up directly with SE, as they just use SE's software, and all of that is handled by SE directly."

I can't say for sure this is true but it does worry me.

---

Eh, it's p common for third party "helpers" like this to not be informed of later plans. Just because they filled (and overfilled) the quota SE told them first doesn't mean that what SE told them was the real quota to begin with.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Finnfinite

Eh, it's p common for third party "helpers" like this to not be informed of later plans. Just because they filled (and overfilled) the quota SE told them first doesn't mean that what SE told them was the real quota to begin with.

---

I really hope they sell more, I was really looking forward to going.

Well, people in my FC are extremely pissed off that less than half of them actually had a chance at a ticket. People are getting sick of stupid mistakes like this.

Quite honestly, I see nothing being done about this fiasco. I will be legitimately shocked and amazed if S-E opts to actually take the time to offer a solution.

Its logistical limitations is why they are keeping a venue at 2,500 people. Anything larger and it will overwhelm their staff and thus, requiring a professional event company to take over, ballooning the costs. Keeping it at 2,500 people allows the staff and developers to give everybody a chance at meeting them where if they had it at 5,000 to 10,000, that just wouldn't be possible. Its also a cost issue where they have to cover the cost of renting the venue and setting up the events, etc. Its mostly cost recovery, even factoring in the store where they sell items. If you wanted to have things as large as Blizzcon, your going to have to increase the price of the ticket to close to $500.00 or more. Running a convention is VERY expensive and VERY hard to do.

I got a chance to ask them if they would be willing to increase the size beyond 2,500 to 3,000 and they really didn't want to go over those limits. So no, it is what it is and that's all it will be.

The 2018 NA FanFest ticket sale really seems like a it was a disaster. :(

If I recall, the ticketing site broke down in 2014, but it still took more than 24 hours to sell out? Note this was also at the Rio.

And in 2016 it still took several hours to sell out.

So how is it then that in 2018 people who were in the queue exactly at 12:00:00 PDT weren't able to get tickets?

And what was up with the "presale" - were too many tickets pre-sold (how did you even get into the presale anyway?) so maybe they weren't available in the regular sale? Or were too many tickets grabbed by robots and scalpers?

:confused:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hyperia

Its logistical limitations is why they are keeping a venue at 2,500 people. Anything larger and it will overwhelm their staff and thus, requiring a professional event company to take over, ballooning the costs. Keeping it at 2,500 people allows the staff and developers to give everybody a chance at meeting them where if they had it at 5,000 to 10,000, that just wouldn't be possible. Its also a cost issue where they have to cover the cost of renting the venue and setting up the events, etc. Its mostly cost recovery, even factoring in the store where they sell items. If you wanted to have things as large as Blizzcon, your going to have to increase the price of the ticket to close to $500.00 or more. Running a convention is VERY expensive and VERY hard to do.

I got a chance to ask them if they would be willing to increase the size beyond 2,500 to 3,000 and they really didn't want to go over those limits. So no, it is what it is and that's all it will be.

---

Wow, <that's too bad!> I do like interacting with the developers and staff, but 2500 seems ridiculously small and almost guaranteed to disappoint the majority of fans who want to attend.

If FFXIV is competing with WoW.... maybe they should consider having a larger convention!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hyperia

Its logistical limitations is why they are keeping a venue at 2,500 people. Anything larger and it will overwhelm their staff and thus, requiring a professional event company to take over, ballooning the costs. Keeping it at 2,500 people allows the staff and developers to give everybody a chance at meeting them where if they had it at 5,000 to 10,000, that just wouldn't be possible. Its also a cost issue where they have to cover the cost of renting the venue and setting up the events, etc. Its mostly cost recovery, even factoring in the store where they sell items. If you wanted to have things as large as Blizzcon, your going to have to increase the price of the ticket to close to $500.00 or more. Running a convention is VERY expensive and VERY hard to do.

I got a chance to ask them if they would be willing to increase the size beyond 2,500 to 3,000 and they really didn't want to go over those limits. So no, it is what it is and that's all it will be.

---

Um...

About Blizzcon, their tickets are $199.99.

Why would SE need to charge $500 for the same thing?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Avenger

The 2018 NA FanFest ticket sale really seems like a it was a disaster. :(

If I recall, the ticketing site broke down in 2014, but it still took more than 24 hours to sell out? Note this was also at the Rio.

---

I remember that selling out in under an hour. I remember being very nervous about not getting tickets year-one. Had three people working to get them.

Quote:

---

And in 2016 it still took several hours to sell out.

---

That it did. It was much less frustrating.

I managed to get through and get the four tickets I needed. I knew it was going to be more of a fight this time due to moving back to the Rio. Good god was 2016 great. Had a suite in The Paris for that one.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Avenger

The 2018 NA FanFest ticket sale really seems like a it was a disaster. :(

If I recall, the ticketing site broke down in 2014, but it still took more than 24 hours to sell out? Note this was also at the Rio.

And in 2016 it still took several hours to sell out.

So how is it then that in 2018 people who were in the queue exactly at 12:00:00 PDT weren't able to get tickets?

And what was up with the "presale" - were too many tickets pre-sold (how did you even get into the presale anyway?) so maybe they weren't available in the regular sale? Or were too many tickets grabbed by robots and scalpers?

:confused:

---

The ticketing site in 2014 didn't break down, but people were worried that they weren't getting a response from the site. The site kept going, but a lot of people closed it and tried again, losing their place completely in queue. I bought tickets and went to the 2014 one; all I did was leave my page up and played the new patch, checking back on it in between runs and confirming my purchase when my number was up. Yes, it took hours to sell-out for the 2014 tickets, but that's because the queue took that long to process everyone.

From what's been said, the queue broke on the ticket page and people that weren't supposed to have codes, got them (I've had an active account since 2013, never letting it drop, and I never received a code. I also had no plans on going this year; cat's surgery came out of my trip funds, or I'd be really upset about that to begin with).

Well, you are quite right about the con caps. But the issues we are addressing is not about the cap. It's about ppl without purchase privileges was able to purchase the tickets by bypassing the access codes(or copy of the direct URL to the purchase site). Yes, it's showclix's problem, and directly SE, but it's still a problem. If 2500 legit player is attending the fanfestival that's good, I'll give up. but what happens if 1000/2500 tickets were purchased by the bots or scalpers? I doubt not many player will(or be able to) purchase this over-priced resales. So how many will actually show up at the fes? 1500? 2000? Count how many ppl are complaining about this issue in the forum/twitter/facebook/etc., it's only a couple hundred. I'm pretty sure they can squeeze in everyone who's willing to go.

Sounds like those RMT bots have struck again and expect in-game ticket selling advertisements. Jokes aside (hopefully), I do think that their inability to handle current online market trends like, credit card or ip address tracking when purchasing is very worrying. They supposedly have 6 million players yet they can't seem to handle a simple ticketing system for 2500? Very worrying indeed, and I only hope that people who do want to go or have codes get their tickets since it takes real dedication to shelve out a couple hundred for a ticket, not including hotels, travel, etc.

Good luck to you all and SE check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Everyone is speculating the impact of bot-purchasers and scalpers. While I don't doubt some would be intending to resell, I don't think it's as huge as people are making it out to be.

Another odd thing - several people in my FC (including me) never actually received the email with the code. (Of course I have been getting periodic billing statements from SE, so clearly some messages are making it through!)

I ended up submitting a support ticket and then queueing 1.5 hours for web chat support in desperation - but eventually I did get a code!

They said it was a common problem and that many players apparently never received the code emails.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Freyar

Everyone is speculating the impact of bot-purchasers and scalpers. While I don't doubt some would be intending to resell, I don't think it's as huge as people are making it out to be.

---

Its not so much the scalpers and bots, but the fact that people got tickets without the codes and by skipping the queue that the rest of us were sitting in trying to get ours legitimately.

And then there are those of us who got a ticket but no longer want it because none of our friends were able to get one.. The option to edit the names was locked right after I found someone to give it to; I get that it's supposed to cut down on scalping but c'mon.. Now I'm out $150 and there's one wasted ticket someone with more friends could have used. :/

Feels like I've been pushed away by someone very close. Now, just by listening to Stormblood theme breaks my heart and reminds me of this tragedy. I don't know if I can keep up with the game anymore...><

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Avenger

Another odd thing - several people in my FC (including me) never actually received the email with the code. (Of course I have been getting periodic billing statements from SE, so clearly some messages are making it through!)

I ended up submitting a support ticket and then queueing 1.5 hours for web chat support in desperation - but eventually I did get a code!

They said it was a common problem and that many players apparently never received the code emails.

---

They made a public statement on the Lodestone saying if you didn't receive your code by july 4th to contact them. The emails for this were sent through in a different way - mine ended up in my "promotions" folder and I almost missed it myself.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Its not so much the scalpers and bots, but the fact that people got tickets without the codes and by skipping the queue that the rest of us were sitting in trying to get ours legitimately.

---

That didn't skip the queue. My code wasn't asked for, but I still had to wait in the queue.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Freyar

That didn't skip the queue. My code wasn't asked for, but I still had to wait in the queue.

---

No, there was a separate exploit for skipping the queue. As soon as one person got through, they could send their URL to anyone and the url would take them straight to ticket purchasing without any time in the queue at all.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Finnfinite

No, there was a separate exploit for skipping the queue. As soon as one person got through, they could send their URL to anyone and the url would take them straight to ticket purchasing without any time in the queue at all.

---

Interesting to hear, I'd love to see someone publish it.

I posted this in the other thread, but hopefully someone who sees this can push the message along for a simple fix.

Around 4pm Showclix locked all names on badges (prior to 4pm you could edit the names, now you can only change character names and worlds). This already will prevent most scalpers from selling badges. To fully fix the issue, all they need to do is state that IDs will now be required to pick up every badge and they will allow full refunds on any tickets purchased for 48 hours. Scalpers will have no choice but to refund all their tickets or risk having useless badges they can't claim. SE can then resell those badges. People who got their badges legit with real names are safe, scalpers aren't. Perfect.

People suggesting you punish the innocent by reclaiming ALL badges are crazy.

Greetings,

We would like to follow up on reports that there were Fan Festival tickets sold without users needing an access code. Our ticket vendor explained that they had to temporarily pause the access code requirement while they addressed a technical issue that was slowing down the site. During this brief period, a small number of tickets were purchased without an access code. We investigated those purchases and did not find any evidence of ineligible purchases.

Please rest assured that we have also seen comments on other issues with ticket sales shared by the community, such as claims of users purchasing more than their allotted amount of tickets. We have investigated these concerns, and at this time have not found anything outside of the expected results. Should we discover any abnormalities, we will take the appropriate measures as necessary.

We are humbled by the overwhelming response from those who want to attend the Fan Festival. We made more tickets available this year than ever before and we understand the frustration of not being able to procure tickets. We wish we could accommodate everyone, and so we'll do our best to try and host even more of our passionate adventurers in the future.

That's a load and a half.

There you have it guys. I never even attempted to go to the fest but I've been watching this go down. That's it... The tickets are gone. Sorry you all had to go through this.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bayohne

we'll do our best to try and host even more of our passionate adventurers in the future.

---

TL;DR: Better luck next time nerds.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nandalowell

TL;DR: Better luck next time nerds.

---

Best TL;DR for the situation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bayohne

Our ticket vendor explained that they had to temporarily pause the access code requirement while they addressed a technical issue that was slowing down the site. During this brief period, a small number of tickets were purchased without an access code. We investigated those purchases and did not find any evidence of ineligible purchases.

---

That's worrying. Why didn't they just pause ticket sales then? Why even make an access code a requirement if your vendor could just disable it while still allowing purchases? If the queue system was already in place, then it makes even less sense to remove the access code requirement because pausing the sales would have kept everyone in queue and in order. By allowing people to bypass it, it inherently screwed people who were already there with the required access code.

I am very saddened by this response.

I cannot not believe that you had more tickets than last time, yet sold out seven hours faster. not unless they were purchased by bots and other such scalpers people were in line (including myself) the moment tickets went up, yet in less than twenty minutes it was all gone. It feels as though Square doesn't actually care about the players.

I wish this wasn't the case... I love this game so much. It's gotten me through a lot of hard times, but I think that's what depresses me the most. It really and truly hurts.

Basically Square enix ffxiv fanfest isn't about those passionate about the game, it's about those who can make the most profit from it. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I actually liked this company. I wanted to go to the fanfest very much.

there are reports of people who joined the line after others, and got tickets. something went wrong here, but neither square, nor showclix cares to own up to it.

I guess at least the scalpers might not get all the tickets sold since the name change feature was lock (which is strange to do since nothing at all was out of place or unexpected of the ticket sales right. even if last time you could change the name months after buying)

again sorry for the rant, I'm very upset right now, and though I knew square would just come up with an excuse and tuck their money in their pocket instead of solving the problem. I was hoping they would do the decent thing for the fans since gasp this is suppose to be a fanfestival.

thank you for your time

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bayohne

Please rest assured that we have also seen comments on other issues with ticket sales shared by the community, such as claims of users purchasing more than their allotted amount of tickets. We have investigated these concerns, and at this time have not found anything outside of the expected results. Should we discover any abnormalities, we will take the appropriate measures as necessary.

---

Keep looking, because something sure stinks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bayohne

Greetings,

We would like to follow up on reports that there were Fan Festival tickets sold without users needing an access code. Our ticket vendor explained that they had to temporarily pause the access code requirement while they addressed a technical issue that was slowing down the site. During this brief period, a small number of tickets were purchased without an access code. We investigated those purchases and did not find any evidence of ineligible purchases.

Please rest assured that we have also seen comments on other issues with ticket sales shared by the community, such as claims of users purchasing more than their allotted amount of tickets. We have investigated these concerns, and at this time have not found anything outside of the expected results. Should we discover any abnormalities, we will take the appropriate measures as necessary.

We are humbled by the overwhelming response from those who want to attend the Fan Festival. We made more tickets available this year than ever before and we understand the frustration of not being able to procure tickets. We wish we could accommodate everyone, and so we'll do our best to try and host even more of our passionate adventurers in the future.

---

That's just blatantly unacceptable. A problem exists, you allowed it to go through, and claim everything's fine? "More tickets available this year than ever before" and we're supposed to believe that everything sold out in under 20 minutes when past fan fests took 10 hours, even days!? I call your PR bluff.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by yukaru

I am very saddened by this response.

I cannot not believe that you had more tickets than last time, yet sold out seven hours faster. not unless they were purchased by bots and other such scalpers people were in line (including myself) the moment tickets went up, yet in less than twenty minutes it was all gone. It feels as though Square doesn't actually care about the players.

I wish this wasn't the case... I love this game so much. It's gotten me through a lot of hard times, but I think that's what depresses me the most. It really and truly hurts.

Basically Square enix ffxiv fanfest isn't about those passionate about the game, it's about those who can make the most profit from it. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I actually liked this company. I wanted to go to the fanfest very much.

there are reports of people who joined the line after others, and got tickets. something went wrong here, but neither square, nor showclix cares to own up to it.

I guess at least the scalpers might not get all the tickets sold since the name change feature was lock (which is strange to do since nothing at all was out of place or unexpected of the ticket sales right. even if last time you could change the name months after buying)

again sorry for the rant, I'm very upset right now, and though I knew square would just come up with an excuse and tuck their money in their pocket instead of solving the problem. I was hoping they would do the decent thing for the fans since gasp this is suppose to be a fanfestival.

thank you for your time

---

I feel you 100%. It's a very sad response. I'm pretty upset about it too. I've gone to the 2014 and 2016 events and they were some of the most fun I've had as I've got to meet so many great friends there. Sure people can "still go to Vegas" and have fun, but it's disappointing on so many different levels that those of us who were in the queue at the first second were passed over while people got around and purchased. I had no trouble purchasing tickets for the past two events, and while its pretty easy to tell the game has only gotten more popular, its upsetting that the festivals aren't willing to grow at the same rate.

For me it sucks as well due to the fact that I wanted to make sure I could get accommodations through the group rate offered by the Rio and SE so I already have my reservation booked for an event I'm now not able to go to! Very sad indeed :(

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bayohne

Greetings,

We would like to follow up on reports that there were Fan Festival tickets sold without users needing an access code. Our ticket vendor explained that they had to temporarily pause the access code requirement while they addressed a technical issue that was slowing down the site. During this brief period, a small number of tickets were purchased without an access code.

---

Here's the thing though, the access codes were virtually useless because they never expire even after being used. There's a post on Twitter where someone posted their access code and if you put it into the website to gain access to order the tickets, you can get right in infinitely. But that's okay, it didn't matter because the ticket vendor took it offline, and you still allowed sales! So there was never any purpose to the access codes because everyone could have shared just one code and then they weren't required at all. I'm going to call out your wording too. You're attempting to undermine the problem by overly stating it's small. Tickets were sold out in twenty minutes, so time was already brief of an already relatively small number of tickets.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bayohne

We wish we could accommodate everyone, and so we'll do our best to try and host even more of our passionate adventurers in the future.

---

Except you'll probably have less passionate adventurers due to this fiasco and poor response. Square got their money, why should they care about treating their fans fairly? Outstanding response.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Patt

I feel you 100%. It's a very sad response. I'm pretty upset about it too. I've gone to the 2014 and 2016 events and they were some of the most fun I've had as I've got to meet so many great friends there. Sure people can "still go to Vegas" and have fun, but it's disappointing on so many different levels that those of us who were in the queue at the first second were passed over while people got around and purchased. I had no trouble purchasing tickets for the past two events, and while its pretty easy to tell the game has only gotten more popular, its upsetting that the festivals aren't willing to grow at the same rate.

For me it sucks as well due to the fact that I wanted to make sure I could get accommodations through the group rate offered by the Rio and SE so I already have my reservation booked for an event I'm now not able to go to! Very sad indeed :(

---

Yea that sucks. hope you get that worked out.

Wouldn't be as bad if these were a yearly thing. Instead, wait 2.5 years and try again. Hopefully SE will get a better grasp of the demand next time and increase supply accordingly, but that's probably wishful thinking. I already budgeted the money for fanfest, since I can't go, I'll spend my money elsewhere. SE's loss.

They also just straight up need two events for NA. One east coast, one west coast. They've clearly got the demand to support it. PAX had to start doing that. It's not like Las Vegas is the only city capable of handling 4000-5000 people at once. SDCC, NYCC, and Dragon*Con all can handle 75-100K people.

I keep rereading Bayohne’s post in light of all the tweets and posts I’ve seen and I can’t help but feel that this response is somewhat tone deaf and self congratulatory.

There’s no apology here, little empathy towards your adventurers. Just “we’re so popular” and “we’lll try better next time”. Guess that’s all we’ll get, but as a lifelong fan of this franchise it’s credibility has taken a serious hit.

I don’t even want to log in tonight. I was so jazzed about this patch too.

Any answer towards the copy pastaed responses from support we saw about this being a pre-sale? I expect that’s a misnomer.

Really expected a different response, it doesn’t even ‘feel’ like Bayohne. Anyway dude, I’m not about killing the messenger but I gotta express my dissatisfaction, this whole thing felt very messy despite the shiny new webpage.

Dear, Bayohne

Thanks your humble response, I respect that you are only doing your job and relaying information from the team to us.

This event has shown us that in these kind of situations that your team isn't willing to actively communicate with the community in a timely manner, Even that you are investigating the situation.

I find this unprofessional as a Company with a large enough player base as FFXIV, We should have first hand support from our Community Leaders and Coordinators for such events.

If there was going to be a problem with your purchasing application or website it should have been properly field tested by your team and your team should have been properly communicating with your retailer in the event like this occurs.

Now many players are upset and rightfully so at your company, I believe that this is a good example of poor leadership, and bad communication, If we are truly your valued player base then you would protect us at any cost. You failed us.

Wait, so all the sudden everyone is giving up because SE made this official statements? Comon ppl, you all try harder when it gets to End contents! why give up now?
Made more tickets available this year? by reducing the cap from Paris to Rio? how many was available anyways? The ticket vendor now admits they've encountered a technical issue at the time of sale and therefore this chaos happened.
It's not a matter of how many go through or not. Doesn't care if it was 5 ppl or 1000 ppl. what matter is that people without the code was able to purchase the ticket and many people with the code couldn't.
Don't let SE and showclix get away from this. then please release that "few" that got through. I don't know what the odds are, but at least give us a chance.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bayohne

Greetings

---

Were there any tickets reserved for the tour partnership from Japan with Square Enix and Nippon Travel Agency? I'm curious how many tickets were unavailable for NA players due to non-NA players reserving said tickets with the tour agency.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...3_03-07-29.png