Fanfest Ticket purchasing improvments/suggestions.

I feel that there should be a thread outlining the issues experienced this year by purchases (both VIP and Normal tickets alike) in order to obtain constructive feedback to be taken into consideration for the next event.

PLEASE NOTE this is for constructive feedback so I would appreciate if personal grievances be left out and we could focus on the issues that caused it.

1) Eventbrite;

This vendor obviously was not up to the task of handling the initial batches for purchase nor does it appear it had systems in place in order to facilitate the needs of people for the VIP purchase I would suggest in the future taking time to go through vendors and find a new one. Perhaps they were the most affordable one to use but sometimes affordability comes at a cost of quality which it certainly did appear to have here.

2) 2nd batch of tickets;

When the first batch of tickets sold out in minutes, I believe that the 2nd batch should have been put on reserve for current account holders immediately due to a very clear interest in current players to attend. The fact that I personally saw many tickets pop up for sale on the 2nd batch sales (many times more than the first batch) indicates that at least a small portion were purchased by resellers which I dont feel is very good for your fans.

3) Initial batch of tickets;

The site was clearly not built to handle the load it was going to be put through for this, so many issues popped up and overall it was an extremely stressful purchase for everyone involved. Frequent website crashes and frequent drops during purchase meaning all progress had to be started over even if your ticket was still in hold. There should have been a way to resume your purchase if it was already started into the reservation process.

4) VIP Tickets;

This seems to be a quick cash grab in and of itself. That aside, the fact that single tickets were only purchasable even if you had multiples registered, is unacceptable. It leads to group segregation. I understand there is a limited ammount of tickets but each one of those tickets was already purchased and batch upgrades should have been available.

5) VIP T-Shirt;

Its come to my attention these will not be guaranteed to be given to you in proper sizings. This is not acceptable when it is listed as a perk, a perk that we paid extra for.

6) Communication;

This has always been a large issue but when booking an event that can cost some people upwards of $3000 to attend, there should be a lot more vigilance in regards to making sure peoples questions and fears get responded to in a timely manner. Some questions were answered yes, many important ones were not.

7) Cancellation of VIP tickets

While probably not possible this time, in the future should you not be able to get the required number of VIP tickets, I feel it should be possible for 1hr after purchase to release these tickets back and have your account unable to make a transaction again to prevent holding indefinitely. Many who now have VIP tickets dont want them because it splits their party and many who want them cant get them. This part needs definite improvement.

Overall I am disappointed how the entirety of fanfest ticket sales were held and I hope for a lot of improvement for next time.

I'll also have to agree that EventBrite wasn't prepared for the server load they ended up with. Ticketmaster, on the other hand, is much more used to "5,000 people hammering on your website at once" and might have been better prepared.

On the upside, this may have led to some back end improvements on EventBrite's infrastructure. I know for a fact that servers and network equipment take a beating during this kind of ticketing process.

As for the ticket transfer, I'll again give SE the benefit of the doubt since it was EventBrite's fault that the upgrades could only be transferred one at a time. Some feedback SE could give to EventBrite is to have an "upgrade all my tickets for this event" button.

I didn't think of the VIP stuff as a cash grab so much as I saw that the London Fest had the option right from the beginning. If SE is going to offer two tiered tickets to future events, that needs to be stated up front.

Considering the demand for this Fan Fest, perhaps SE will consider a larger venue next year... and I HOPE they consider a better ticket vendor. Ticketmaster WOULD make the 'ticket-buying experience' a lot easier on us, but it would also cost them more money in 'fees'. So really, it depends on the success of the event and the likelihood of future ones. I'm sure they know that many of us were dissatisfied with this vendor, but really there's nothing they can do about it at this moment except consider what to do for the future.