FanFest 2023 was an awful experience

First let me start with my love for the ffxiv community and its developers. I have been playing since the start off ARR and this game is very special to me and always will be.

Fanfest was not worth the price of the tickets and the travel expenses. They were aware of how many people where coming to this event and even limited to so many and still they didn't even have enough seats for those who showed up. If you wanted to get just a seat you had to be there at 4am wait until 7 before the opened the doors for you to just be qued up until 9am. Most of the event was 60% of the people there sitting on the floor.

Also there source of entertainment was like 5 carnival games that you waited in line for about an hour or two each and if you did want to play them. The staff in the location was unorganized and did not communicate with one another. They were rude and mean. Just one of those experience was someone yelling and I quote "Ita 4 vs 1000s of you and were tired of everyone's shit l, so take your fucking items and go"

I cant even fully blame the staff because people there were rude, pushing, and aggressive. I was very disappointed with the community.

They didn't hand out shirts if you were able to clear the battle challange, which I was told occurred in past events. The merchandise store closed down both days within 30min of the event starting.

The Piano and Primal concert were awful. They are all amazing musicians but the venue just made all the sound echo and sound muddy.

I didn't even have a chance to meet some of my heroes like Yoshi or Soken. Honestly if you were at home relaxing and watching the stream you got about everything we got without all the stress of this unorganized event.

Then the cherry on top of that whole shit storm was getting covid and so did many other people.

Was not an experience to remember and all I got to show for it is a bag with a pen, sticker, magnet and a key chain.

I would highly suggest not going to one of these events in the future unless Square does some serious rethinking.

On the bright side, those who cosplayed did an amazing job