Tickets are all gone for fan fest

Well this... was stupid. I suppose I'm glad I chose not to go after all. This whole fiasco reminds me of when housing first opened up on the game. I can respect that it wasn't SE's fault the merchant screwed up and sold the tickets without an access code due to "technical issues", but their response is pretty much "Too bad, better luck next time! We'll try harder in the future." and that's it. Meanwhile those who waited fair and square get screwed.

I like how some people were like "well at least the live stream is free" yeah but you can't buy the merch online at all and can't go see your friends on the live stream. Well looks like I am going to be saving up for the fan fest in paris... "more tickets were available this year" is really hard to believe when the paris hotel in 2016 was bigger and tickets took what 12 hours to sell out? on top of this you guys opened a deal with the rio wayyy in advance and now a lot of people have to get their money back on. This is insane and really this needs to be addressed so this doesn't happen. Even though i live in the US i have an EU account so i was out of a code so i didnt even try to get a ticket. Hence why I am going to try the one in paris.

Maybe they can live stream the concert as an apology for this debacle.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bayohne

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.

---

Bayohne, thanks for your response. Would it be possible to answer a few of the questions people might have? It would be great to know the answers to questions like:

- How many tickets were there this year compared to the previous fan festivals?

- How many of them were sold in a presale before the regular sale? What were the conditions to get into the presale?

- What was different this year that caused people who queued at 12pm sharp to not be able to get tickets?

- Why did SE apparently underestimate the demand so much? How do you estimate demand, and what went wrong?

- Is there any truth at all to the rumor that some people were able to use software and bots to buy tickets?

- If there is massive unmet demand - as there seems to be - why not make the events larger (maybe more like Blizzcon) or more frequent?

Also: will there be any secondary sale of returned or canceled tickets?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

For me, this was about a chance to meet one of my former static members, and my EB partner, at somewhere we'd both be able to enjoy ourselves and feel safe going to. Given I'm UK and she's Finland, there is no chance in hell we're gonna go somewhere to meet up unless there's an event we're both going to. I hope the EU one isn't this catastrophic.

---

With all respect, but you sound like a wuss here. Come out of your comfort zone. If you really wanna meet someone, you wont make these lame excuses and would do anything to meet her. If you need events to both have fun, you guys clearly dont know each other well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ShadowHunterrX

With all respect, but you sound like a wuss here. Come out of your comfort zone. If you really wanna meet someone, you wont make these lame excuses and would do anything to meet her. If you need events to both have fun, you guys clearly dont know each other well.

---

No reason to take your anger and frustrations out on someone unrelated to the issue. We're all upset at how this issue was mishandled, and many people were planning to meet up for a myriad of reasons.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Selenara

I like how some people were like "well at least the live stream is free" yeah but you can't buy the merch online at all and can't go see your friends on the live stream. Well looks like I am going to be saving up for the fan fest in paris... "more tickets were available this year" is really hard to believe when the paris hotel in 2016 was bigger and tickets took what 12 hours to sell out? on top of this you guys opened a deal with the rio wayyy in advance and now a lot of people have to get their money back on. This is insane and really this needs to be addressed so this doesn't happen. Even though i live in the US i have an EU account so i was out of a code so i didnt even try to get a ticket. Hence why I am going to try the one in paris.

---

To you, and anyone else who didn't get tickets: I definitely recommend going to Paris Fan Fest if you can!

Last time, I was at both Fanfests: Las Vegas and Frankfurt. And I'm telling you, Las Vegas was awful compared to Germany. Frankfurt Fanfest - or more specifically any european FFXIV-related thing - is organised by an entirely different Team than NA Fanfest.

• They had a much larger, much more beautifully decorated venue.
• They had an entire extra hall for merchandise, which you could preorder specifically months before the con and only had to pick up via a code you got so you would get any merch you wanted without having to stand in queue for hours.
• My personal favorite: There was actual daylight in the venue. Do you know how awful it was running around Vegas Fanfest without seeing daylight for the better part of like 12 hours? Never knowing what time it was?
• They had a ton of minigames in Frankfurt for you to pass your time with friends, they had a lottery (cactpot) even, a 'wondrous tales' sticker card that you could fill for small extra goodies by doing those minigames.
• There were locker rooms/changing rooms on site with lockers for you to store your purchased merch or your bags in.

TL;DR
EU Fanfest 2017 was the most perfectly organised convention I have ever been to. If you didn't get a ticket for Las Vegas, all I can tell you is that you're actually not missing out on that much, concerning only the convention itself. Try to grab a ticket for Paris Fanfest instead. You won't regret it.

(Wrote this reply to someone else just now, but here it is for you too)

To you, and anyone else who didn't get tickets: I definitely recommend going to Paris Fan Fest if you can!

Last time, I was at both Fanfests: Las Vegas and Frankfurt. And I'm telling you, Las Vegas was awful compared to Germany. Frankfurt Fanfest - or more specifically any european FFXIV-related thing - is organised by an entirely different Team than NA Fanfest.

They had a much larger, much more beautifully decorated venue.
They had an entire extra hall for merchandise, which you could preorder specifically months before the con and only had to pick up via a code you got so you would get any merch you wanted without having to stand in queue for hours.
My personal favorite: There was actual daylight in the venue. Do you know how awful it was running around Vegas Fanfest without seeing daylight for the better part of like 12 hours? Never knowing what time it was?
They had a ton of minigames in Frankfurt for you to pass your time with friends, they had a lottery (cactpot) even, a 'wondrous tales' sticker card that you could fill for small extra goodies by doing those minigames.
There were locker rooms/changing rooms on site with lockers for you to store your purchased merch or your bags in.


TL;DR
EU Fanfest 2017 was the most perfectly organised convention I have ever been to. If you didn't get a ticket for Las Vegas, all I can tell you is that you're actually not missing out on that much, concerning only the convention itself. Try to grab a ticket for Paris Fanfest instead. You won't regret it.

So, a canned response taking no responsibility for a slight on the community and absolutely nothing addressing the fact that people could just skip over the queue completely which locked out tons of people who were in queue immediately on the hour.

I don't know why I expected anything more.

Are the people in Paris pretty fluent with English or shall I start taking lessons for French?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ShadowHunterrX

With all respect, but you sound like a wuss here. Come out of your comfort zone. If you really wanna meet someone, you wont make these lame excuses and would do anything to meet her. If you need events to both have fun, you guys clearly dont know each other well.

---

With all due respect, you don't know our circumstances. Both of us have issues (especially me), that makes doing what you suggested pretty much impossible. Even at an event there's still a chance things could go wrong (and in past events I've been to it has), but it's still our best chance. So kindly take your ignorance with you please. Thanks.

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.

---

I dont live in NA but I still feel for all those that lost their chance to go to the fanfest.

Why does this read like its not a big deal that the vendor just took down the very system that was placed there to stop scalpers and not stop the sale too? How is this acceptable and I cant believe that its just a small amount of sold tickets. (Also every single one that was sold that way is one ticket too much) But next to that other bugs happened too..yet seemingly nothing is done against it.

How is it also acceptable that there are sold tickets to the JP fanbase if they have their own fanfest too? This would not be a problem if they could get tickets that did not sell or if this was a huge place but with that limited amount of people for such a huge country?

At least it would be nice if you give people the chance to refund it..but seemingly nothing will be done..

I really hope that nobody buys from those scalpers so that they will sit on their money and have less people there..

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OtakuPyun

Are the people in Paris pretty fluent with English or shall I start taking lessons for French?

---

Parisians would rather set you on fire than speak English with you. Though for Americans maybe they'd make an exception? For the English it's certainly not going to happen.

As fun as Paris would be, the extra $900 for the flight and whatever for the hotel would be too much for most people. They would also miss out on seeing anyone from their data center. It's a nice alternative, but some people, myself included wanted to go for meeting other people from my FC and LS.

Pretty sure the hosting more adventurers next time around, fans are more like screw that we are done, lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Maero

Pretty sure the hosting more adventurers next time around, fans are more like screw that we are done, lol

---

Lot's of people did get tickets and this is just how these cons get as they get more popular. Hell Blizzcon is so popular now you have to have extremely good luck to get tickets.

Have ya'll never tried to buy tickets for something popular before? This is the norm for most big name events. The only difference is that you can't buy tickets from scalpers/third parties later if you miss the direct buy window.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alleo

How is it also acceptable that there are sold tickets to the JP fanbase if they have their own fanfest too? This would not be a problem if they could get tickets that did not sell or if this was a huge place but with that limited amount of people for such a huge country?

---

I would *almost* be okay with this if there was a similar deal on our end to go to the Japan Fanfest. But considering that doesn't seem to be the case, yeah, I have no idea why they would take away chances for NA dwellers.

IF SE is legit that there were really no issues (which I seriously doubt), then that begs an even more serious question of how many fucking tickets DID you sell?

In previous years, we were TOLD how many tickets you sold, but this year has been suspiciously quiet. Is it because you don't want to admit that you are responsible for screwing over your own fanbase by insisting on choosing these small convention venues?

When we look at the census for how many active players there are this year, we're at 246,642 in America. Compare that to the 80,870 active America players that there were in 2016 around the time ticket sales were going up for that Fan Fest. Pretty big jump, right? So why in the name of god are you moving BACK to a smaller venue? And again, why will you not tell us how many tickets were sold for the event this year? It would need to have been around 3x the number of tickets you sold last Fan Fest if you wanted to be able to accommodate at least the same percentage of your players.

There are legitimate convention centers in Las Vegas that can house much larger groups of people than these convention centers you keep trying to use in the casinos. Why is that something you're not looking in to? Why are you pretending to have been blindsided by the number of people who want to attend your event when you have access to not only the SAME information that I just gave, but even more of it with an internal analytics team that you likely maintain.

This is some bullshit, you know it, and you need to make it right SE.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LunaP

You're right, it was silly of me to think that some people don't have that amount of cash on them at all times. You've enlightened me kind sir.

---

You had literally months to prepare for this. This is how it's gonna be from now on, FFXIV Fanfest is a now a popular con in high demand. There are certain preparations you're going to have to make if you want to increase your chances of going. This includes collaborating with friends and pooling money together so that the first person who gets in can buy for everyone. Since I've started doing this I haven't missed a particular con I want to go to(Though I recognize the chance is definitely still there!). Take it as a lesson learned and better luck next time!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Presbytier

Lot's of people did get tickets and this is just how these cons get as they get more popular. Hell Blizzcon is so popular now you have to have extremely good luck to get tickets.

---

I would argue that Blizzcon is more of a video game convention, not a fan festival. For every fan who gets a ticket to Blizzcon, you can find two people there who are representing the video game industry. I might be naive, but I think Yoshi and team actually care about their fans and want to celebrate them directly. And I think they want to accommodate as many people as possible. All they have to do is get a bigger venue and sell more tickets. In vegas, that is easy to do.

I'm happy for people who got tickets legitimately, and we all should be. But SE needs to understand our anger and disappointment so they can do better. They fell short, it seems.

It's not 'this is just how it gets'... that's BS. This is 100% a failure on SE/Showclix's part for how they handled ticket sales. 10hrs+ compared to >20min? Pretty obvious there was more than just shenanigans going on but they don't want to try to fix it because it would be costly for them, possibly something showclix is not willing to deal with, and they can just wave their hands and wait for the little white knights to come in and try to shut down the outrage so it can just 'go away'.

They failed at the BASICS of how they advertised to players tickets were going to be handled. There is proof of that. And this 'answer' is bs AND tone-deaf to boot.

Don't just give SE a pass on this and don't come in here trying to white knight for them, either. They certainly don't deserve it in this situation one bit.

This is an utter disaster. Like countless others, I was over-prepared, incredibly hyped up, completely ready to snag my tickets. Entered queue immediately at 3:00, sat in queue and had 'reserved tickets' (lol) for 28 minutes before receiving the 'sold out' message. People who entered queue a few minutes after me got tickets. People were able to purchase tickets without needing to input a code. Many reports have been made that people were able to COMPLETELY BYPASS THE QUEUE, as well as buy more than 4 tickets. Tickets were being posted for sale at least by 3:45, at 2-3x the original price (or even more).

FACTS:
- You should not refer to it as a 'queue' if it is actually a lottery-based system. This is incredibly misleading.
- You should not refer to them as 'reserved tickets' if they aren't actually reserved in any way, shape or form.
- There is absolutely NO reason for ANYONE, not even ONE PERSON to be able to purchase tickets without an access code. This renders the codes completely obsolete. Never mind the fact that MANY people have reported being able to purchase without a code.
- There is absolutely NO reason for ANYONE to be able to BYPASS THE QUEUE by ANY means. That is COMPLETELY BROKEN.
- If the stated purchase limit is four tickets per code, this needs to be enforced for EVERYONE, not just some.
- In 2016, tickets took several hours to sell out (I'm hearing 10-12? Not sure, but in 2016, my friends and I certainly had no issues purchasing). The fact that this year they were all sold out in less than 30 minutes is suspicious and worthy of being looked into.
- THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. Huge errors were made. You cannot just brush this under the rug. Yes, the technical issues are on Showclix, but that does not mean it isn't YOUR duty to investigate and ultimately make things right.

There was a huge amount of heartbreak and anger in my group last night. I think something like 5/15 of us got tickets. We have collectively decided to meet up in Vegas anyway, as many of us have been planning this literally since Fan Fest 2016 ended. We've already saved up, booked hotels and time off work. We are deeply disappointed, not just in not being able to attend Fan Fest, but in SE's response to this disaster. Perhaps you got your money and that's all that matters to you, but know that this has deeply affected the way your community views you and that will eventually have repercussions.

I'm so disappointed, SE. I didn't think you could top the Merch Line 2016 fiasco, but here we are...

I hope the community team, the FFXIV devs, and Square Enix can see that FFXIV FanFest is in incredibly high demand and that they need to invest in its growth. If they're so set on Las Vegas, Nevada, look towards University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Hell, look to the Long Beach Convention center like Square Enix is using for Los Angeles FanFesta for Brave Exvius.

There can actually be huge shifts in demand. 2008 Blizzcon to 2009 for example. Anime Expo's Premier badge sales went out in a minute earlier this week compared to a time that was far longer than that last year.

Edit: I'd like for actual purchasers of 4+ or 20+ tickets to step forward. Here. Not on a random place like 4chan where people generally love to shitpost to stir trouble or to troll you. Square Enix's statement is that they didn't find anyone doing that.

As it is, a large portion of my friends all got tickets for themselves/groups of theirs. Several friends groups will be going. Telling them they have to go through it again would be horrible and cause far more trouble. More people would be unhappy. I'm glad I already set myself up for "You have high chances of not getting a ticket like 2014, just take a vacation since you haven't done so in awhile other than the recent trip a year ago."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OtakuPyun

Are the people in Paris pretty fluent with English or shall I start taking lessons for French?

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ilyrian

Parisians would rather set you on fire than speak English with you. Though for Americans maybe they'd make an exception? For the English it's certainly not going to happen.

---

I'm American and when I was in Paris a few years ago the only people who spoke English with me were hotel concierges, tour guides, the help desk at the Lourve and the people trying to sell me overpriced souvenirs (ofc I was also traveling with someone who spoke basic French, so that might have influenced them). That said that's pretty standard in my experience for non-English speaking countries. If you are really serious about going I'd at least pick up a phrase book or find a podcast for traveler's French or something.

Quote:

---

I'd like for actual purchasers of 4+ or 20+ tickets to step forward. Here. Not on a random place like 4chan where people generally love to shitpost to stir trouble or to troll you. Square Enix's statement is that they didn't find anyone doing that.

---

I'm afraid this may be anecdotal -as I'd rather not throw the person who organised this under the bus as he had good intentions- but I was asked during AX if I was willing to join a ticket pooling group (buy 4 each and redistribute the remaining 3 to his friends who didn't manage). Unfortunately I don't know how many people were involved, or how many tickets he ultimately bought (but I know it's definitely at least 4), but I do know that after I declined to join, he went ahead and did this in the end.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Remyogic

Have ya'll never tried to buy tickets for something popular before? This is the norm for most big name events. The only difference is that you can't buy tickets from scalpers/third parties later if you miss the direct buy window.

---

It'd not be so worrying if not for the allegations of being able to bypass the queue, not requiring an access code (because ACTIVE accounts during a certain time period was supposed to be required), and being able to circumvent the limit of 4 tickets per code are the main culprits to our ire. Not simply the demand was greater than the product. If it's a norm to have these things happen at "big name events," then I don't know why more people aren't up in arms on a broken system. Even if then, the statements of "more tickets than ever before" doesn't match up with the amount of time it took to sell-out, as compared to the events that took place 2 years and 4 years ago, that should make people question if what is being said is true (which granted, Bayohne is just doing their job and shouldn't be the target of anger).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ExKage

As it is, a large portion of my friends all got tickets for themselves/groups of theirs. Several friends groups will be going. Telling them they have to go through it again would be horrible and cause far more trouble. More people would be unhappy.

---

I don't think the majority of us are calling for a total re-do. We fully recognize that many players did in fact legitimately obtain their tickets. It's not their fault if they were able to purchase when someone who queued 5 minutes before them was not able to. It's not their fault if they weren't prompted for an access code. It's not their fault if they were one of the lucky ones.

What I personally would like to see is, at the very least, an apology and an admission that things went very wrong and a promise that this will not happen again. Ideally, I'd like to see customers' e-mail addresses run (or contacted) to verify they had a legitimate access code, and if any codes were found to have been used multiple times (which apparently was also possible), those transactions should be investigated.

Without a doubt, anyone who cheated the system by skipping the queue deserves to have their tickets revoked. If a customer entered the queue as they were supposed to, regardless of how long it took, and can verify they had a code, then the sale was legitimate. Unfair, but legitimate. I don't know exactly how the sales worked over 4 tickets; I'm not sure if the drop-down list allowed for greater amounts or if people perhaps refreshed the page or something to gain access to more. It's possible it was the latter option, and that's why SE claims to have no evidence of excess ticket purchases. It's possible those purchases were made 4 tickets at a time. Yes, it could just be people trolling, but with everything else that happened -- in particular, the fact that the URL could be used to bypass the queue -- I wouldn't be surprised if using that URL could also allow the person to make multiple transactions using the same or no access code.

do you think SE will release more tickets at a later date?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Boxworm

What I personally would like to see is, at the very least, an apology and an admission that things went very wrong and a promise that this will not happen again. Ideally, I'd like to see customers' e-mail addresses run (or contacted) to verify they had a legitimate access code, and if any codes were found to have been used multiple times (which apparently was also possible), those transactions should be investigated.

---

I agree with you Boxworm. Based on Bayohne's statement, the messages sent out on Twitter, and the silence now it would be nice to see some for of an apology. It would also be nice to have more transparency. As it stands, the communication has been very PR damage control and honeyed to the point that I feel like we're being treated as though we were stupid. I love this game. I appreciate what the devs and community team does for it. But I have to say, the way this has been handled is souring my enjoyment of the game knowing that something that started with being all about listening to the players who stuck through the bad times and driving towards the better has now become this? It's not a good feeling.

I'd love if more tickets were available. But that's not gonna happen. Even if there was wrongdoing found, are they gonna do another queue for what they deem a "small number" of tickets that were bought without codes or through less savory means? No. At this point it'd just be nice to see some damn empathy and a demonstration that they know they messed up and take some ownership about it instead of kicking it back and forth between Showclix.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Akira

do you think SE will release more tickets at a later date?

---

No. Not unless they investigate and revoke the illegitimate tickets. They've stated that they are sold out. Not that the first wave is sold out, just plain sold out. They can't release more tickets because the venue has a strict fire code limiting the number of people that can attend. (Technically, as I recall, in 2016 we were slightly over the limit and the staff were very upset about it.) So, unless they are able to rent an additional room at the Rio, which they seem to have no interest in doing, then that's all folks!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Boxworm

I don't think the majority of us are calling for a total re-do. We fully recognize that many players did in fact legitimately obtain their tickets. It's not their fault if they were able to purchase when someone who queued 5 minutes before them was not able to. It's not their fault if they weren't prompted for an access code. It's not their fault if they were one of the lucky ones.

What I personally would like to see is, at the very least, an apology and an admission that things went very wrong and a promise that this will not happen again.

---

Honestly, this. If things were all 100% legitimately, I'd at least like to see a "we put up z_number_of_tickets and y_number_of_unique_IP_addresses were up at the site on release" to give up a scope on how massive the scale of demand has gone up for FFXIV and it's biennial festival (it doesn't really matter if each unique address [tries to] buy 1 or 4 tickets - just to see the scope of demand would be a nice thing to see in this situation). If things have, indeed, gone awry, I'd definitely like to hope SE would come forward and apologize for it, even if they cannot find a reasonable way to fix it. I'd rather them acknowledge it than sweep it under a rug.

I'd like to chime in something here that SE doesn't seem to realize.

To them, FanFest is the Big Official Event. It's got the JP development team, a nice rock concert, a big formal merchandise room, formal programming, and delicious details about the direction of the game, like new expansions or new jobs.

But really? The reason most of us go is to have an excuse to hang out with friends, and other people who play XIV.

Given the demand for this one event, SE clearly has the necessary fan base to support smaller, 1 day, regional "official" mini fan fest meetups. I used to host Final Fantasy fan panels at anime cons, but the anime cons started denying panels for all but the most recent games and I stopped trying.

In the off years between expansions, coordinate 1 day mini cons with the Letters from the Producers Live. Don't just piggy back off other conventions. Give us something closer to our big cities in NA to look forward to in the off years. While getting to meet fans from CA while I'm in Las Vegas is kind of cool, I'd much rather meet up with other Georgia players in Atlanta. And I'm sure people in other big cities feel the same way.

We don't need all the bells and whistles, the LAN setups, the merch lines, of the big Fan Fest. We just want an excuse and a place to go meet up with other XIV players, that we don't have to self organize entirely as fans on our own. (Or try to get an anime con to give us some love.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Melchar

I agree with you Boxworm. Based on Bayohne's statement, the messages sent out on Twitter, and the silence now it would be nice to see some for of an apology. It would also be nice to have more transparency. As it stands, the communication has been very PR damage control and honeyed to the point that I feel like we're being treated as though we were stupid.

---

Exactly, couldn't have said it better myself. I don't want to jump to conclusions and say that all SE cares about is $$$, because it's still somewhat early and things could change. But their actions thus far have really left a bad taste in my mouth. It really feels like they might as well tell us, 'we don't really care if the tickets went to the hands of fans or scalpers. As long as we get paid for them, it's not our problem.' It's like all this shady stuff is getting ignored and they're just going to pretend everything went more or less according to plan, and downplay the glitches that we know for a fact occurred.

I'm a legacy player who has supported this game since before its very beginning, and I know many others here have done the same. It hurts to get shafted like this and our concerns brushed off like they're unimportant. If SE has any respect for their fanbase, they owe us an investigation, an explanation, and an apology. This isn't a case of us being butthurt because we didn't get tickets. It's a case of the system being very broken, and things happened that never should have been able to happen. If we are told that it's a queue system, that an access code is required, and that there is a limit of four tickets per code, then I think we're entitled to expect all of those things. If that isn't what we receive, we deserve an explanation.

Welcome to Japan's luck obsessed culture, we're all Japanophile's here it's to be expected, the ideals of free market, supply and demand and meeting demand boggle the Japanese businessman's mind while being kindergarten simple for Americans. If it exists you can buy it is an American mindset, Japan is obsessed with rarity, and creating false value via shortage, we all knew what to expect. Very sorry to the victims in this, laughing at the scalpers yes they exist the world groups on facebook are already calling them out and posting pics of their ads on facebook, hilarious the tickets are non transferrable which will create more victims via pidgeon sacrifices. These fan festivals are not the game they are real life distractions don't get it messed up you don't need this, if you have the time sure go have fun but otherwise use that money to do something else. Next time remember Japan is not America, they do not think like Americans, their economy is focused on Monopolies and sleight of hand marketing, If you are not generally lucky buy Japanese stuff on Ebay and never put faith in a company which is notoriously harmful to it's customers to do the right thing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Catwho

Given the demand for this one event, SE clearly has the necessary fan base to support smaller, 1 day, regional "official" mini fan fest meetups. I used to host Final Fantasy fan panels at anime cons, but the anime cons started denying panels for all but the most recent games and I stopped trying.

---

I wonder if I could try and see about working with Square Enix to host some UK mini events with the letter from the producer. It'd also be awesome if they could partner up with gaming conventions like Play Expo, EGX (if they don't already do this), etc. Keep that hype train rolling.

wow, this is pretty sad to read even as a EU player, and makes me a bit worried about 'our' fan fest (Frankfurt one had a similar fail with the tickets for the Uematsu signing mini event)
Also someone playing on a JP server actually made a thread about this on the Japanese forums, which even got a response from Foxclon on page 2. On the good side this means people all the way up are definitely aware about this problem. On the bad side basically all Foxclon did was link to Bayohne's response in this thread and say that this is the problem of the NA community team.

Mostly, I'm wondering how much of the hall is going to be empty despite the fact their tickets sold out. Hopefully very, I'd rather not find out a lot of people bought tickets to the event off of scalpers who are selling them for twice their worth on Facebook and other Social media platforms right now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TThibi

Welcome to Japan's luck obsessed culture, we're all Japanophile's here it's to be expected, the ideals of free market, supply and demand and meeting demand boggle the Japanese businessman's mind while being kindergarten simple for Americans. If it exists you can buy it is an American mindset, Japan is obsessed with rarity, and creating false value via shortage, we all knew what to expect. Very sorry to the victims in this, laughing at the scalpers yes they exist the world groups on facebook are already calling them out and posting pics of their ads on facebook, hilarious the tickets are non transferrable which will create more victims via pidgeon sacrifices. These fan festivals are not the game they are real life distractions don't get it messed up you don't need this, if you have the time sure go have fun but otherwise use that money to do something else. Next time remember Japan is not America, they do not think like Americans, their economy is focused on Monopolies and sleight of hand marketing, If you are not generally lucky buy Japanese stuff on Ebay and never put faith in a company which is notoriously harmful to it's customers to do the right thing.

---

Thanks for informing us that Japan is not America. I have referenced Google Maps and it appears you are correct. I had no idea. Truly wild stuff.

Regardless, remember that Square Enix does in fact have a sizeable North American division. Also remember that Showclix is based in the US. Also remember that the previous two Fan Fests were not lottery-based. Also remember that we entered a 'queue' which informed us our tickets were 'reserved'. So, no, we did not 'all know what to expect'. We certainly didn't expect this. And, by the way, cheating the system isn't considered 'luck' in any country. It's considered, well, cheating.

But thanks for the comment that 'it's not the game it's a real life distraction and we shouldn't get it messed up we don't need it' (whatever that is even supposed to mean). I'm sure that's going to make a lot of people feel much better. Just what we needed, incredibly confusing advice from someone out of touch with reality.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by StrangerFanatic

Mostly, I'm wondering how much of the hall is going to be empty despite the fact their tickets sold out. Hopefully very, I'd rather not find out a lot of people bought tickets to the event off of scalpers who are selling them for twice their worth on Facebook and other Social media platforms right now.

---

As far as I understand, the tickets supposedly can't be transferred/sold now. If that is in fact the case, I suspect the hall will be pretty damn empty! lol hope they aren't betting on making good sales at the merch booth