Suggestions for Future Fan Fests

[Spartan_Pendragon]

... and hope you had lots of fun once you were able to leave the queue behind !

How would they know, the Fest was over by the time they were out of the queue! =)

[raelgun]

First, dont have the event the same time as MCM comicon and actually book out Excel centre or Earls court, though the venue was brilliant and very pretty, however, numbers are numbers, a bigger venue and more staff (merc stuff though I was one of the first if not first 5-6 to buy something but I saw the queue) would help massively here.
This should of been a 2 day event, to give an example, MCM is a 2 day event and the tickets for that is much cheaper for the whole weekend, felt the developer part of things felt short, we would of loved a music panel as well.
Also regarding the in game challenges, this is a mmo, and you supplied non mmo mouses, do you know how much marketing opportunity was lost here, from a user of a corsair M95 and logitech G600, using such sub standard mouse was terrible, however, this would of been a great chance for the sponsors to sell stuff at these events as well, one of the people in our group was actually interested in both the keyboard and controller supplied at the event and was interested in purchasing these, but didnt know what exactly these bit of kits were to look for them by name.

Also the stage needed to be more open, there was rather annoying pillars in the middle of the room as mentioned earlier and is venue restricted, Earls court has a huge open area towards the back of the venue where you could easily stage something and have a lot of people standing or even seated.
But was actually great fun and the staff worked hard on the event, keep it up.

Another note, any chance to not have the fan fest in London, one of the most congested cities on the planet and with some of the higher prices for hotels around, if it was birmingham NEC or manchester evening news areana, those are large venues, and if you include hotels and just general prices its more affordable,
NA fan fest wasnt done in Washington DC or New york.

[UlricCraft]

Final Fantasy XIV: A Queue Reborn

I had no issues and it was probably the best day of my year/decade.
Didn't bother queueing for merchandise and no point beating that dead Chocobo further.

-Queues were very fast.
-In-game activities were very fun.
-Activities not in-game could've been organised by a primary school féte.
-Treasure hunt was derpy.
-Dev panels were fantastic.
-Guild room/art display was pitiful. (Not the gallery, the fan art)
-Tattoos were awesome. Do this again for sure.

Include a PVP element!

[Finalfreak]

Also regarding the in game challenges, this is a mmo, and you supplied non mmo mouses, do you know how much marketing opportunity was lost here, from a user of a corsair M95 and logitech G600, using such sub standard mouse was terrible, however, this would of been a great chance for the sponsors to sell stuff at these events as well.

I totally agree. I myself play with the G600 too and I really can't understand why there were no MMO-mouses. Like raelgun said, we had a person in our group who was looking for the keyboard which was being used during Odin, but had no idea what the name of the keyboard was. So she was just looking on google a bit, hoping to find it.
An event like Fan Fest is a great opportunity for your sponsors to show off their tools (might want to give flyers after doing odin with "You just used the ... keyboard and ... mouse. Visit us on http:// ...")

Guild room/art display was pitiful. (Not the gallery, the fan art)

What the hell? Some of that art was really amazing. Were you staring at the floor?

[Zirael_Foxfire]

I had fun.
Mini games and mini-events were good idea and made sure even if you brought in friends or GF/BF who don't play, they could enjoy themselves even not knowing anything about the game. Multi floored venue you actually have to -explore- to find things worked out very well. Making your way to the Quartermaster felt like a quest on itself (not sarcasm), and stumbling upon the Aetheryte was a nice wow! moment.

I enjoyed the 'quests' to get extra loot throughout the day. It's like catnip for MMORPG players! I doubt even Miqote dancers sporting coeurl tongas would've beaten that feel of enjoyment. Hmm, on second thought tho, let's have both next time!

Staff were nice and helpful and did their best to help us have fun.

Things you could improve:

- I don't think German or French community team was present? Well, not that I've looked too hard, but I noticed quite few DE/FR people and it would've been nice if they had someone from organisers speaking their language to talk to. If EU reps were around and I didn't notice you, my apologies. But maybe make yourselves more visible next time?

- Merchandise shop was a disaster...

- There was definitely not enough tickets, I'm sure there were many more people wanting to come for the event than actual tickets.

- VIP tickets were gone in like 10min when sales started three months ago. Those who had to be at work/school/holiday/hospital had no chance. I realise you don't really care who buys the ticket, you just want it sold, but I think a lottery in this case would've been more appropriate. If someone didn't get a VIP ticket, they'd get a guaranteed normal ticket, to avoid people having to double-book in case they don't win VIP ticket.

- would've been nice if you reserved like 100-200 tickets and put them on sale like 4 weeks before event for people who find themselves capable and wanting to come after all.

- No one told us there was free WiFi for event participants. Pleasant surprise.

- I haven't noticed much Dev/community team presence on the floors. I know you guys must be tired from all the travelling, interviews and event preparations and I wasn't present everywhere all the time, so maybe I missed you.

- There was no raffle, unlike in NA. I'm not asking for big things like $1000 graphics cards, but some people getting like 1-3 month game time cards for them or their friends, or few free copies of the game with Dev autographs as a giveaway wouldn't hurt. Or those metal-like pins with job logos NA people got.

- I know it depends what kind of sponsors you get, but mice weren't what a MMORPG player would expect. I'm sure they are fine for FPS games (they were actually quite comfortable), but next time Naga or G600 please, or let us bring our own gear.

[Mjollnir]

VIP tickets were gone in like 10min when sales started three months ago.

I clicked 'buy' on the hour, the page got back to me at eight seconds past the hour to say they were sold out of VIP. So sad :/

(afterwards, I heard tell of ppl getting some at the 15min mark when tix reserved on the hour timed out)

[KaiIsileth]

I have just been told my post is too long. So deleted most of it. Leaving:

The two suggestions I would have for the future are 1) perhaps a prize for completing the whole day, i.e Odin, Roulettes and Quests. 2) The Cosplay event being earlier in the day. Me and my parter entered and got through the first sift, but ended up missing the competition as we didn't realise the car park we had used shut at 6pm (silly for in London.) Still, it is a long time for costumes to stay in prime condition (especially if you wanted to ride the Behemoth.)

Thanks for everything.

[Gamina]

Merch shop has been mentioned above so I'm not going to go on about it. I pretty much second all that has been said about it. Luckily, we got in straight after the opening ceremony and were out in around an hour.

Queues for everything else were perfect although I do wonder how much that was down to the fact that 50% of attendees were in the merch queue... Enjoyed the mini games. Dev panels were cool. Staff were all wonderful although I did find some of the reactions of the inhouse Tobacco Docks Staff funny.

Didn't mind the food £6.50 for a meal at lunch we had pie, mash, gravy, a drink for under a tenner. MCM hit me for £8.00 for a single hot dog the day before... and at Earls Court last year I parted with £50 for hot dogs and luke warm coke for three people...

The one thing I have seen lots of people complaining about is the venue. In my opinion it was perfect for the size and scale of the event, for the ambiance and the feel of Eorzea. People have cited Earl's Court (which is being demolished anyway), Olympia and Excel... I see MCM being cited as the reason for the 14 FanFest not being in a bigger venue yet lets be realistic 75,000 people attended MCM at the weekend... even if people attended only one day of MCM thats still ten times as many on a given day than were at FanFest. Earls Court One holds 20,000 people, lets not kid anyone here the FFXIV fanfest would never pull those numbers. The tickets for the event didn't even sell out till two weeks before the event!

[Denyer87]

-Guild room/art display was pitiful. (Not the gallery, the fan art)

I really hope you're not being serious here as that is quite possibly the most idiotic thing i have ever seen written here.

So disrespectful to those who entered and i for one thought that the artwork submitted was fantastic! I would have loved to have met some of the people who did them and congratulated them on a job well done.

[MarVell]

I really enjoyed the event and my only suggestions for next time would be:

1) Give the choice of keyboard/mouse or gamepad at EVERY monitor. As a PS4 player, I found it very frustrating that 2 out of the 3 challenge rooms were keyboard/mouse only and the third one only had gamepads at half of the monitors. And of course the challenge room with the gamepads had by far the longest queues...

2) I felt very sorry for the people that queued for hours for the merchandise. I was one of the first 10 people there and got out in 5 mins but the queues throughout the day were unacceptable.

Other than that, great day and I felt like I got good value for my £65 - not only a great day out but lots of quality freebies: Odin t-shirt, event t-shirt, that brilliant USB charger thing, cool event bag etc.

I thought the venue was great and I hope the Fan Fest returns next year :-)