Tickets are all gone for fan fest

[olders, don't you want to have clear/honest answers to what went wrong this time?
I never intended this to be a "PVP" battle my original post was on the side of all players and on all of us who are caught in this mess for no fault of their own. And that includes all legit ticket holders. The response seems to have been aimed at creating an us vs them thing. I only related that was not the truth about my original post at all.I read through all the twitter horror stories that included on person, who's wife had worked on her cos-play outfit for over a year to be one of us who logged right in at 12pm and were denied a ticket. I am sure there were many others. My post was only aimed at hoping SE would see it and lighting a fire under them to get it fixed and not just brushing this off.

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Originally Posted by ChezaraAsura

So....my question is, why cannot they give us SOME hope and allow us to buy tickets at the door again? I mean think about it, if they did it then, why can't they do it now?

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With so many outstanding tickets and the matter of “maximum capacity”, to suggest this could give false hope to people who could tip the balance and with too great of a risk for naught.

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Originally Posted by ChezaraAsura

.....imagine if say someone were to organize a massive event during fanfest time where the people with fanfest badges, did like a baton pass thing.

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The downside in this is that badges are associated with purchaser info. There’s a -chance- that we could get away with it, maybe a few times, but I could see them shutting that down quickly once they catch on. (There’s also a matter of “trust” and “integrity”, that the loanee will return to the loaner.)

BOTH OF THESE SAID:
Some of us have discussed in prior comments that for people with non refundable travel arrangements (or those stubborn enough to still fly out and visit their friends, badge or no), we could still host our own offline meets. Chill at the local joints around the Fest, people watch, etc. No, it’s not getting into the con... but huddling together to watch livestreams, while we enjoy the camaraderie of new friends is better than nothing!

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Originally Posted by Rokke

If there were 7 of you and each person could buy 4 tickets you only needed 2 people to get through the queue to ensure everyone in your party could go.

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Just to point out, that wasn't actually an option for a lot of people. Due to website issues, and who knows what else. Many people (including myself) did not have the option to purchase 4 tickets.
For myself, I was ready to put in for two tickets, and when it popped up I only had the choice of 0 and 1 in the drop down.

So saying, "you could've just bought 4," while normally being true, in this case, wasn't.

Overall, it's disappointing, to be ready to by multiple, and not being given the option.

"Problem? What problem? We got your money. We don't see a problem." - Community team.

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Originally Posted by Mierna

Just to point out, that wasn't actually an option for a lot of people. Due to website issues, and who knows what else. Many people (including myself) did not have the option to purchase 4 tickets.
For myself, I was ready to put in for two tickets, and when it popped up I only had the choice of 0 and 1 in the drop down.

So saying, "you could've just bought 4," while normally being true, in this case, wasn't.

Overall, it's disappointing, to be ready to by multiple, and not being given the option.

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Ah, in that case, my sympathies.

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Originally Posted by Machka

Adding to this discussion since it seems you're missing what others are trying to point out. Bottom line, you're bringing up all these excuses when there were actually steps that you/others could have taken to make all that a non-issue.

In short, how much cash you have on hand is irrelevant. No one was purchasing tickets with cash. It's all digital transactions over the internet. Credit card, debit card, both of which can be prepared beforehand. Even if someone doesn't have enough in their balance, it's 2018 - there are multiple options like PayPal or Venmo for transferring money between people over the internet. And as players of an online MMO, I'm sure everyone involved at least has access to a phone/computer and the internet.

No one is trying to take out anger on you or others taking that angle. People are pointing out what could have been done differently so maybe you/others won't make the same mistakes again in the future. You can be dismissive about this kind of feedback if you like, but at the end of the day some people planned ahead for this kind of stuff and it helped them get tickets. It's like the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper.

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I'm still saying the confusion here is you're not reading the previous 3 posts, the person simply asked "why anyone would" and that was just 1 of many answers given by people, it wasn't to say its the only reason it was to simply answer their question, and since they kept firing back as if other people were idiots, I simply backed up w/ my comment, again please at least read up before responding, it saves you SO much time <3 I wasn't being dismissive about anything, if anything just noting that one persons tone on how they couldn't possibly fathom why anyone would not think in " X " sense was silly was not an absolute thing that should be. I can understand you thinking this if you only read the last comment, but given as I already explained the whole thing in comments after, I'd like to ask you back why you're ignoring it of if you simply saw that and quoted before reading further or back ( if possible ). The reason I'm saying anger is because there is a major amount of assumption here based on this, and its saving time explaining but if people aren't reading what's being said then there's nothing I can do really other than keep pointing it out.

You are 100% correct on it being 2018, and 100% fine on your statement of everyone should be on the same page, no ones arguing with you, not everyone thinks about pooling though same with people going for their first time, sure its ok to assume everyone should 100% be in the know but the truth is it isn't and never will be, people can vent, doesn't mean they're stupid for not knowing issues would happen, people take risks, others are unaware of how crazy these situations can be, its the people that cry "suck it up" and yell at others or belittle them when they're simply venting off with others as is the purpose of this thread for people to share their experience, and I'm positive as much as you probably are that many will learn from it ( those that don't already know ).

It sucks they couldn't get their tickets, it sucks that some didn't have the money to do so or think last minute to have their friends send them money ( if trust was high enough for that since we don't know everyone's relationship here ) granted those together could have yes, there's always going to be a coulda, shoulda, woulda but things happen. Since people are pretty heated I can understand how skipping over to my final comment to 1 person could lead to this confusion, either way I've stopped responding, and now only attempting to clear up the confusion when people bring it up again, I'm more here to see how SE responds if anything.

It's hard to expect any professionalism from NA community team at all. They always handle contents and events poorly through out the history. Don't get me wrong, JP and EU comm teams are at their top notch. Their quality control of the XIV brand is superb. Compare the past fanfests and you see how NA's event organizing skills are at fan-made amatuer con level. Looking back 2016, only official attraction caught my attention was 'Ride on 1/1 scale fat chocobo' attraction which took hours to get on, CGI chocobo video clip we were suppose to receive by e-mail never arrived. And everything else was just county-fair level mini-game booths. And the worst experience there was the huge merch line mess. I was shocked to see what JP and EU got in their fanfests. Everything seemed very similar, but way more polished. NA team simply lack of professionalism. All they care about is to impress the HQ and Yoshi with easiest solution. Poor Yoshi, who doesn't know the work around in the states have to listen to these close-minded ppl's suggestions(usually bad ones) and blinded from better options.

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Originally Posted by Avih

It's hard to expect any professionalism from NA community team at all. They always handle contents and events poorly through out the history. Don't get me wrong, JP and EU comm teams are at their top notch. Their quality control of the XIV brand is superb. Compare the past fanfests and you see how NA's event organizing skills are at fan-made amatuer con level. Looking back 2016, only official attraction caught my attention was 'Ride on 1/1 scale fat chocobo' attraction which took hours to get on, CGI chocobo video clip we were suppose to receive by e-mail never arrived. And everything else was just county-fair level mini-game booths. And the worst experience there was the huge merch line mess. I was shocked to see what JP and EU got in their fanfests. Everything seemed very similar, but way more polished. NA team simply lack of professionalism. All they care about is to impress the HQ and Yoshi with easiest solution. Poor Yoshi, who doesn't know the work around in the states have to listen to these close-minded ppl's suggestions(usually bad ones) and blinded from better options.

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Another thing I want to point out. "Real Escape Game by Scrap entertainment Final Fantasy XIV: Trials of Bahamut" that was held in 2017 was a huge mess too. Apparently Scrap didn't know sxxt about FFXIV.
We were basically thrown into a plain event hall with no FFXIV prep at all, job selection had "Theif" which we don't even have in the actual game, and had to use medieval toy sword you can probably get at target for Excalibur.
Why did NA comm team even allow them to do such a poor job? Where was the quality control team to monitor this? JP one was awesome by the way.

What I'm trying to say here is, the mess we are currently going through with this fanfest fiasco all ties down to NA team's poor decisions & managements led them to connect with wrong organizations.
If they didn't chose Showclix for ticketing vendor, if they didn't chose Rio for the venue, if they have considered "pre-orders" instead of "pre-sales", things might have been a lot better for majorities of the players.

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Originally Posted by Brill_

Given demand, they should have an east and west fanfest.

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This is a cool idea a east and west cost fan fest one side gets yoshi one year the other the next held at the same time with the same games and compitions it could be a good way to manage a large group

You guys act as if the community team actually have that much control and say over what they can actually do or share.

The community team is the only channel we have. No one is lashing on them; the answer just wasn't enough - and usually isn't on MOST of the problems reported on the forum for a while now.

Exactly, they are a conduit through which the brand communicates. The message we got was a step up from your usual PR ass covering device. Some timely ownership over the misleading nature of the sale and the codes and some transparency would be nice. But as time passes, my hope for them to do the right thing is waning.

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Posting here to what I said on Reddit:

Just want to add some data points to the discussion.

1. Everyone queued in ASAP. So when I see posts about how they queued in 0.0001 second so did everyone else and their guild at that time. It will be hard to say how the queue was processed with everyone queueing simultaneously.

2. The member base is growing. Most people waited for the fanfest to have a few trial runs before deciding to go. Our guild and in-game friends decided to do it this year because that has given us enough time to have known each other. So it's not weird that tickets sold out faster than previous years. It would not make sense to compare the attendance to the inaugural event to 2nd event. It was bound to scale by 3rd event. Also there is some Nippon-tour partnership square-enix is doing so a portion of tickets may have already been claimed by that as well. We might see a lot of Japanese players in Las Vegas this year, which, I'm pretty excited about. :)

3. Here are some data points of our guild's ticket buying experience:

Just to note: When I say "get in" I mean past the queue and directly into the purchasing screen where it requests the code. All of these data points below are from queueing into the queue right at 12pm PT.

One of our members was able to get to the ticket screen at exactly 12pm PT. A code was required. It took forever to take his code. There were times he was afraid his session will time out since the timer was going but the page was not loading. He got the timed out error "10.250.1.31:27017: Read timed out after reading 0 bytes, waited for 30.000000 seconds". After awhile and refreshing a couple of times he was able to complete his purchase at 12:12 pm PT. He ordered 1 ticket. He later regrets not buying the max. 4 amount since a few of our guild members couldn't get a ticket ):

Our next member was able to get in at 12:22pm PT. A code was required. He was stuck on the loading screen after entering the name of ticket holders. He was able to complete his purchase at 12:26pm PT. He ordered 2 tickets.

I was able to get in at 12:22pm PT. A code was required. I was also stuck in the loading screen after the ticket holder info. I received an 500 error "We're sorry — something seems off. It's possible that you're seeing this page because your request is taking a little longer than usual. Please try again shortly. Our engineering team has been notified of this incident and will be looking into it for you." and I freaked out in panic mode as I heard from others that they got the sold out message. Thankfully refreshing solved it. I was able to complete my purchase at 12:29pm PT. Got the confirmation email at 12:30pm PT. I ordered 4 tickets.

Sadly my other members and friends got the "All tickets have been reserved, more tickets may become available as people decide not to complete their purchase" at 12:24pm PT. However, I had another friend who had the sold out message but didn't give up. He kept refreshing and was able to get him and his friends tickets. Ticket purchase count unknown, Im assuming 4. A code was required.

(2/2)

Based on this data the first sold out message came at 12:24pm PT. However some tickets were released minutes after that and people that kept refreshing was able to purchase released tickets. In all our attempts a code was required before being able to proceed with purchase screens even for those that were not able to get a ticket. I wonder for those who did not need a code clicked directly from their the email which would have their code recognized. Vs. someone copying the page link with their code in a notepad to use later which wouldn't have registered the code details from the email cookie. But I don't think we should get so hung up on the code issues since I feel that people who were trying their best to get tickets were there legitimately and legitimately wanted to go. I think the discussion should float more around anticipating a higher volume and seeking a larger venue rather than downsizing it. From what I read, Rio is a much smaller venue than Paris. If their data person on their team wasn't too sure based on previous attendance, then their marketing team should've sent a short survey out to players to get a rough estimate.

Some of our members who were not able to get a ticket are considering going to Vegas anyways just to meet-up with the guild and go into a food coma from all the buffets. XD;

With that being said, if the rumors of people with purchasing more than 4 tickets is true and not just some troll fanning the flames. Then Square Enix should really look into that and cancelling their extra tickets and putting it back into the system as a last chance batch.

Wow, I'm surprised that that many people want to go to this event. I deleted 2 e-mails inviting me to buy the ticket.

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Originally Posted by Rofel

The community team is the only channel we have. No one is lashing on them; the answer just wasn't enough - and usually isn't on MOST of the problems reported on the forum for a while now.

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Not even a page earlier from this are people acting as if a) the community team is at fault for the PR response and b) that the team is unprofessional.

That's the fault on their bosses, aka SE top, not on the community team.

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Originally Posted by Avih

What I'm trying to say here is, the mess we are currently going through with this fanfest fiasco all ties down to NA team's poor decisions & managements led them to connect with wrong organizations.
If they didn't chose Showclix for ticketing vendor, if they didn't chose Rio for the venue, if they have considered "pre-orders" instead of "pre-sales", things might have been a lot better for majorities of the players.

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Small note, though I agree with most of it (disorganization, code planning being half baked), the Rio isn't inherently a bad venue. Its not my fav hotel in Vegas as I'd much rather be on the strip, but it actually can hold a lot of people. The issue is that SE only rents out 1 event room. They did the same at the Paris- we shared the event area with some Navy event one day and what looked to be a wedding reception another day.

SB has been heavily promoted and we reached a new high with the active player population after its release, they should have expected more people would try to attend. If SE wants to continue to host the event in Vegas they really need to book multiple rooms.

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Originally Posted by ExKage

Not even a page earlier from this are people acting as if a) the community team is at fault for the PR response and b) that the team is unprofessional.

That's the fault on their bosses, aka SE top, not on the community team.

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That's why its important that the community team take this feedback to their top dogs, since their response wasn't helpful at all. And a response like that paints SE as a whole as unprofessional.

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Originally Posted by ExKage

Not even a page earlier from this are people acting as if a) the community team is at fault for the PR response and b) that the team is unprofessional.

That's the fault on their bosses, aka SE top, not on the community team.

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The HQ(Boss) is in Japan. NA team is dealing with non-native English speakers here. They are pretty much on their own to make important decisions in this region.
Foxclon(JP Comm Top) specifically stated in the JP thread yesterday that NA fanfest is mainly run by the NA team, so any concerns need to be taken to them.

with that being said, NA team was responsible for booking Rio, insists players to get discounted hotel rooms many days prior to the ticket sale dates, and using Showclix resulting in this mess.
Yes, SE USA Top gave them the final approval, but they are just there to sign paper works. All the details are finalized by the team.

I was the one who created the JP thread so there you go.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...81%8B%EF%BC%9F

At this point, most of the non-ticket holders are not whining to earn tickets, all we are demanding is a simple, honest answer and apology to this mess.
They've already admitted there was a system glitch(disabling crucial access code program) in showclix during the sales,
god knows what could've gotten affected by this diabling issue, but there's fairly large number of ppl complaing(not whining) unlike the previous years with fair competition.
The statement they made in this thread is not clarifying nor apologizing at all.

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Originally Posted by Avih

The statement they made in this thread is not clarifying nor apologizing at all.

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Thank you Avih, what you said sums it up clearly. If they would just confront this and not try to brush us off with such a lame duck response I think it would ease the suffering and anger.

Some ownership would certainly be nice. If they want to dance around it maybe it can be brought up during a panel Q&A at fan fest.

I know I’ve commented a few times in this thread already. I’m normally not vocal on the forums but this really rubbed me the wrong way. I’m also speaking for several folks at the moment, but I’m sure if they continue to let this go they’ll come here and start chiming in too.

For those who were calling people stupid for booking the hotel way ahead of time. Let me fill you in on this, I booked TWO hotel rooms with two queens at the Rio for a total of $925 for three nights. As of right now, I just checked ONE room with two queens cost a total of $837 for three nights. I didn’t even get the tickets, have it in my basket to enter name and lost it anyway, but I’m still going because I want to see my friends there. So my point is it’s better to cancel the hotel reservation than paying double because it was getting closer to the day of the event.

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Originally Posted by Azuru

For those who were calling people stupid for booking the hotel way ahead of time. Let me fill you in on this, I booked TWO hotel rooms with two queens at the Rio for a total of $925 for three nights. As of right now, I just checked ONE room with two queens cost a total of $837 for three nights. I didn’t even get the tickets, have it in my basket to enter name and lost it anyway, but I’m still going because I want to see my friends there. So my point is it’s better to cancel the hotel reservation than paying double because it was getting closer to the day of the event.

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I forgot to mention the room were booked with event discount and so was the room that I just looked at a few min ago. That was a huge difference in pricing in just a few months. I booked them back in mid June.

[QUOTE=raionheart;4723845](1/2)
Posting here to what I said on Reddit

Our next member was able to get in at 12:22pm PT. A code was required. He was stuck on the loading screen after entering the name of ticket holders. He was able to complete his purchase at 12:26pm PT. He ordered 2 tickets.

Your statement proves there was an issue, I like many got into the queue instantly, it was still 12:00 but I waited in the queue for 26 minutes to find the tickets were sold out and yet your friend didn't get into the queue until well after me? I am glad you were able to resolve it. Maybe if I had refreshed the screen I could have gotten a ticket.

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Originally Posted by Azuru

I forgot to mention the room were booked with event discount and so was the room that I just looked at a few min ago. That was a huge difference in pricing in just a few months. I booked them back in mid June.

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I booked mine back when the fan fest date was first announced. it was only $450 for my room with a $66 deposit. I was told I would get a refund if I cancel by 3 days before the arrival date. As soon as I failed to get a ticket I canceled but then re-instated my room later that day. I am waiting to see what SE does about this mess.

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Originally Posted by Lainmyst

Your statement proves there was an issue, I like many got into the queue instantly, it was still 12:00 but I waited in the queue for 26 minutes to find the tickets were sold out and yet your friend didn't get into the queue until well after me? I am glad you were able to resolve it. Maybe if I had refreshed the screen I could have gotten a ticket.

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I think you misunderstand. Let me clarify. When I say "get in" I mean past the queue screen and able to purchase tickets. Sorry for not being clear. We along with the rest of the world queued in as soon as it went up. Everyone in my group had the page up since 8am morning of and I'm sure other parties had as well. The queue did not begin till 12pm PT as stated. Let me edit that post to clarify in case someone misunderstands as well and add fuel to the fire.

I am located in Silicon Valley area (known for high speed connections) on a corporate fiber network. Even I was biting my nails every second during the queue page. So if you read back to my first point on my post people seem to think they are the first to queue in at 12, they're not. Everyone who were trying to get a ticket were refreshing and queueing at the same time.

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Originally Posted by Azuru

For those who were calling people stupid for booking the hotel way ahead of time. Let me fill you in on this, I booked TWO hotel rooms with two queens at the Rio for a total of $925 for three nights. As of right now, I just checked ONE room with two queens cost a total of $837 for three nights. I didn’t even get the tickets, have it in my basket to enter name and lost it anyway, but I’m still going because I want to see my friends there. So my point is it’s better to cancel the hotel reservation than paying double because it was getting closer to the day of the event.

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Actually I think you are rather smart to book a room in advance. I've been telling everyone to and annoyed for those who didn't . Because here's the thing, you have 72 hrs before the reservation to cancel for free. So it doesn't make sense not to book ahead. Now the discount rate is all gone/sold out and the room prices are high again and/or they will need to look for another hotel for a better deal.

I actually originally booked on Hotels.com for (1) room two Queens at The Rio from the 15-18th and my total came up to like $800 ish. This was on March 22nd

Thankfully when Square-Enix announced the room discount I quickly booked another room at The Rio with the discount and my new total was $461 for the same dates. I canceled my old reservation from hotels.com. This was on June 14th

The only thing I didn't book till I had event tickets was plane tickets, cause those are normally non-refundable.

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Originally Posted by raionheart

I think you misunderstand. Let me clarify. When I say "get in" I mean past the queue screen and able to purchase tickets. Sorry for not being clear. We along with the rest of the world queued in as soon as it went up. Everyone in my group had the page up since 8am morning of and I'm sure other parties had as well. The queue did not begin till 12pm PT as stated. Let me edit that post to clarify in case someone misunderstands as well and add fuel to the fire.

I am located in Silicon Valley area (known for high speed connections) on a corporate fiber network. Even I was biting my nails every second during the queue page. So if you read back to my first point on my post people seem to think they are the first to queue in at 12, they're not. Everyone who were trying to get a ticket were refreshing and queueing at the same time.

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Thanks for the clarification, I am starting to get the sense that SE won't do a thing about this and it is possible it is just too difficult an issue to resolve fairly. I went to the last Fan Fest I guess that's enough. Time to move on.

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Originally Posted by Lainmyst

Thanks for the clarification, I am starting to get the sense that SE won't do a thing about this and it is possible it is just too difficult an issue to resolve fairly. I went to the last Fan Fest I guess that's enough. Time to move on.

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Nah I totally understand the frustration. A lot of people were looking forward to go this year and meet their guild mates/ in-game friends and Fan Fest was a safe haven to experience it at. Not everyone from our group made it, and it sucks, cause this will probably be the last fanfest we would meet up for in awhile. It's not something I can budget/time for every 2 years. It will probably be the next next fanfest till I decide to go again. The fault mostly lies in the lack of anticipation/metrics planning on Square Enix's part on volume of attendees. Instead of increasing event space volume they downsized it. Hopefully they figured out how to run the merchandise queue this time around. I hope they do the pre-order/purchase online for merchandise and pick-up on site like I heard they did for the recent events.

p.s. If the rumors of people being able to purchase more than 4 tickets is true, then I hope they investigate those purchases and release the extra tickets back in the wild as a lottery or something.

Yes even though I have moved on in a way i am still sad. I was very much looking forward to this. But maybe something will come through. i held onto my reserved room at the Rio just in case. I heard some who didn't get tickets either plan to still go just to visit outside. I know the only friend I was going to meet up with failed to get a ticket too. Not sure if I could bring myself to go and just hang around outside the event.

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Originally Posted by Lainmyst

Yes even though I have moved on in a way i am still sad. I was very much looking forward to this. But maybe something will come through. i held onto my reserved room at the Rio just in case. I heard some who didn't get tickets either plan to still go just to visit outside. I know the only friend I was going to meet up with failed to get a ticket too. Not sure if I could bring myself to go and just hang around outside the event.

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Maybe they can do a tour deal for the Int'll fanfests like they did with ours. lol That way you have an excuse to go to Paris or Japan XD;

The Community Team Response was severely underwhelming. It did nothing to address current issues (as per SE's habit I suppose) and offered no real solution to the issue at hand. That being said, while most would probably lampoon my idea, I think it'd honestly be best method to ensure that the people who want to go to this event have the ability to, instead of giving the select few.

Cancel FanFest Vegas 2018.

Why? Numerous reasons. The Rio is obviously not suited to hold the sheer amount of people and fans that want to congregate, meet up, and have a good time with guildmates, better halves, and friends alike. Square tends to forget that people have made some serious bonds over this game, either through end game statics of FCs founded to grow and become one large family.

But where would you hold such an event with a large capacity? I mean there are tons of Convention centers in NA. But one convention center seems to fit best: the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago. Ironically, it's the largest convention center in North America at a whopping 2.6 MILLION square feet and it's centralized in the US (I apologize to our Canadian neighbors above.)

As far as the ticket debacle, if you're gonna send codes to people to pre-register for the event, make it so that one code = one ticket. That's it. No more of this buying multiples crap. Verify Name, Age, DOB, IG Character. Common information that Square would need to make sure that the appropriate people are getting the ticket they deserve, without the hassle of waiting in line. And no more of this "We're gonna make X amount available." With the space a convention center provides, especially this one, you should have no issue holding such a large event. Also, maybe talk to city leaders about possible commercial benefits businesses will have if they say, provide certain services that people can benefit from.

Now the date is tricky, usually around June/July an expansion is released, but...why not make Fan Fest the official Launch party of said expansion? Give people a taste, whet their palettes with new content. And furthermore, maybe even sell the expansion and collectors editions on the spot? Merch is obviously going to fly off the shelves, but come on. Common marketing and you honestly make those sales UP FRONT without having players to pay for expensive shipping just to get it in a day or two.

Given the injustice that the NA community has to face pretty regularly when it comes to meeting the people that make these bonds and ties between friends possible (I mean come on! Japan gets FATE's around the country and FF themed cafes while we get Scalp Fest with an eticket fiasco???), the least the Community team can do is pitch the idea of cancelling this. You're spoiling plans of reunions, a magical night between two souls, and essentially casting a dark cloud with talk about "We'll look at this for future events."

Do the right thing SE. Refund everyone's purchases. Cancel the event in November and collaborate this fanfest with the expansion release. Find a better venue and implement a system that is HONEST AND TRANSPARENT, and furthermore: Give the NA community a chance to come together as a whole and celebrate the love that is FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Namikaze-Kirito

Do the right thing SE. Refund everyone's purchases. Cancel the event in November and collaborate this fanfest with the expansion release. Find a better venue and implement a system that is HONEST AND TRANSPARENT, and furthermore: Give the NA community a chance to come together as a whole and celebrate the love that is FFXIV.

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Yeah, this is a horrible idea. People were able to get their tickets, sure the system left much to be desired but by no means should those that got their tickets be punished.

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Originally Posted by raionheart

Maybe they can do a tour deal for the Int'll fanfests like they did with ours. lol That way you have an excuse to go to Paris or Japan XD;

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That is a good idea, I wonder how I could find out about those. I know there were tours for this fan fest, the tickets for the fan fest were pressed so guaranteed. I have a nephew and his wife in Tokyo. I have always wanted to go there so that is a possibility.

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Originally Posted by Awha

Yeah, this is a horrible idea. People were able to get their tickets, sure the system left much to be desired but by no means should those that got their tickets be punished.

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I get that and rightfully so, those who got their tickets shouldn't be punished. But the sheer amount of interest in this event is greater than what they initially perceived. And no one's really getting punished, especially if those that got their tickets got a refund and were guaranteed a ticket to the new venue. (Though there are those who probably made flight reservations, in which case yes I agree they'd be out a plane ticket.)

It's just an idea, but they at least need a better response than what was given.

It's rather silly to suggest that the event should be cancelled. Many people have valid tickets and are looking forward to going. Yes, some people can't go - though that was always going to be the case no matter what happened. Let it be a lesson learned for Square Enix but also a lesson learned for those insisting on acting like they're owed or guaranteed a ticket in such a way as to allow them and their immediate social circle to attend with no issues.

That isn't how flashy events such as this work. Concerts. Festivals. Restaurants. All can be sold out in a matter of minutes when it comes to special deals and events. My guess is that Square Enix aren't too fussed about who buys a ticket so long as a ticket is sold...and they certainly shouldn't be priortising people based on whether or not they're attending in a group as that is very unfair to those who aren't.

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Originally Posted by Lainmyst

Thanks for the clarification, I am starting to get the sense that SE won't do a thing about this and it is possible it is just too difficult an issue to resolve fairly. I went to the last Fan Fest I guess that's enough. Time to move on.

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I empathize with you there but we shouldn’t give up on at least a response or apology. It may be difficult to resolve but they should really take ownership of how this turned out. We need to stay vocal and show them that this is something that could potentially tarnish a lot of the good will they’ve built.

It was supposed to be an exclusive access period for ticket sales and this wasn’t the case. They sought to honor subscribers and did the opposite. Now we have unrest.

Ok so while I agree that the codes and URL snafus were handled woefully inadequately... I'm sorry, but 1) we have no idea how many legitimate players got tickets, and therefore there is still the chance that there really was just an explosion of interest (my con jumped from 8k to 12k in one year, which we were completely unprepared for). 2) "It's popular so if people who wanted to go can't, then they should cancel it"? Wow. Can you imagine what would happen if... I don't know... Every single mega-popular recording artist or comedian followed that mindset? If SDCC, NYCCC, Blizzcon, etc. all decided to cancel simply because there was more interest than availability? That's not how the world works. Popular events sell out. This isn't a digital world in which they can work to provide space and items for everyone.

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Originally Posted by Namikaze-Kirito

I get that and rightfully so, those who got their tickets shouldn't be punished. But the sheer amount of interest in this event is greater than what they initially perceived. And no one's really getting punished, especially if those that got their tickets got a refund and were guaranteed a ticket to the new venue. (Though there are those who probably made flight reservations, in which case yes I agree they'd be out a plane ticket.)

It's just an idea, but they at least need a better response than what was given.

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All that means is they should use this information and plan better for the next fan fest, not cancel the current one.

lmao imagine if every sold out event canceled because some folks were left out. "Sorry everyone! If everyone who might be interested can't attend no one can!"