Tickets are all gone for fan fest

[dark494]

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.

Please rest assured that we have also seen comments on other issues with ticket sales shared by the community, such as claims of users purchasing more than their allotted amount of tickets. We have investigated these concerns, and at this time have not found anything outside of the expected results. Should we discover any abnormalities, we will take the appropriate measures as necessary.

We are humbled by the overwhelming response from those who want to attend the Fan Festival. 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.

That's just blatantly unacceptable. A problem exists, you allowed it to go through, and claim everything's fine? "More tickets available this year than ever before" and we're supposed to believe that everything sold out in under 20 minutes when past fan fests took 10 hours, even days!? I call your PR bluff.

[Patt]

I am very saddened by this response.

I cannot not believe that you had more tickets than last time, yet sold out seven hours faster. not unless they were purchased by bots and other such scalpers people were in line (including myself) the moment tickets went up, yet in less than twenty minutes it was all gone. It feels as though Square doesn't actually care about the players.

I wish this wasn't the case... I love this game so much. It's gotten me through a lot of hard times, but I think that's what depresses me the most. It really and truly hurts.

Basically Square enix ffxiv fanfest isn't about those passionate about the game, it's about those who can make the most profit from it. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I actually liked this company. I wanted to go to the fanfest very much.

there are reports of people who joined the line after others, and got tickets. something went wrong here, but neither square, nor showclix cares to own up to it.

I guess at least the scalpers might not get all the tickets sold since the name change feature was lock (which is strange to do since nothing at all was out of place or unexpected of the ticket sales right. even if last time you could change the name months after buying)

again sorry for the rant, I'm very upset right now, and though I knew square would just come up with an excuse and tuck their money in their pocket instead of solving the problem. I was hoping they would do the decent thing for the fans since gasp this is suppose to be a fanfestival.

thank you for your time

I feel you 100%. It's a very sad response. I'm pretty upset about it too. I've gone to the 2014 and 2016 events and they were some of the most fun I've had as I've got to meet so many great friends there. Sure people can "still go to Vegas" and have fun, but it's disappointing on so many different levels that those of us who were in the queue at the first second were passed over while people got around and purchased. I had no trouble purchasing tickets for the past two events, and while its pretty easy to tell the game has only gotten more popular, its upsetting that the festivals aren't willing to grow at the same rate.

For me it sucks as well due to the fact that I wanted to make sure I could get accommodations through the group rate offered by the Rio and SE so I already have my reservation booked for an event I'm now not able to go to! Very sad indeed

[Zohnax]

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.

Here's the thing though, the access codes were virtually useless because they never expire even after being used. There's a post on Twitter where someone posted their access code and if you put it into the website to gain access to order the tickets, you can get right in infinitely. But that's okay, it didn't matter because the ticket vendor took it offline, and you still allowed sales! So there was never any purpose to the access codes because everyone could have shared just one code and then they weren't required at all. I'm going to call out your wording too. You're attempting to undermine the problem by overly stating it's small. Tickets were sold out in twenty minutes, so time was already brief of an already relatively small number of 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.

Except you'll probably have less passionate adventurers due to this fiasco and poor response. Square got their money, why should they care about treating their fans fairly? Outstanding response.

[yukaru]

I feel you 100%. It's a very sad response. I'm pretty upset about it too. I've gone to the 2014 and 2016 events and they were some of the most fun I've had as I've got to meet so many great friends there. Sure people can "still go to Vegas" and have fun, but it's disappointing on so many different levels that those of us who were in the queue at the first second were passed over while people got around and purchased. I had no trouble purchasing tickets for the past two events, and while its pretty easy to tell the game has only gotten more popular, its upsetting that the festivals aren't willing to grow at the same rate.

For me it sucks as well due to the fact that I wanted to make sure I could get accommodations through the group rate offered by the Rio and SE so I already have my reservation booked for an event I'm now not able to go to! Very sad indeed

Yea that sucks. hope you get that worked out.

[Brill_]

Wouldn't be as bad if these were a yearly thing. Instead, wait 2.5 years and try again. Hopefully SE will get a better grasp of the demand next time and increase supply accordingly, but that's probably wishful thinking. I already budgeted the money for fanfest, since I can't go, I'll spend my money elsewhere. SE's loss.

[Catwho]

They also just straight up need two events for NA. One east coast, one west coast. They've clearly got the demand to support it. PAX had to start doing that. It's not like Las Vegas is the only city capable of handling 4000-5000 people at once. SDCC, NYCC, and Dragon*Con all can handle 75-100K people.

[Melchar]

I keep rereading Bayohne’s post in light of all the tweets and posts I’ve seen and I can’t help but feel that this response is somewhat tone deaf and self congratulatory.

There’s no apology here, little empathy towards your adventurers. Just “we’re so popular” and “we’lll try better next time”. Guess that’s all we’ll get, but as a lifelong fan of this franchise it’s credibility has taken a serious hit.

I don’t even want to log in tonight. I was so jazzed about this patch too.

Any answer towards the copy pastaed responses from support we saw about this being a pre-sale? I expect that’s a misnomer.

Really expected a different response, it doesn’t even ‘feel’ like Bayohne. Anyway dude, I’m not about killing the messenger but I gotta express my dissatisfaction, this whole thing felt very messy despite the shiny new webpage.

[KiwiBubbletea]

Dear, Bayohne

Thanks your humble response, I respect that you are only doing your job and relaying information from the team to us.

This event has shown us that in these kind of situations that your team isn't willing to actively communicate with the community in a timely manner, Even that you are investigating the situation.

I find this unprofessional as a Company with a large enough player base as FFXIV, We should have first hand support from our Community Leaders and Coordinators for such events.

If there was going to be a problem with your purchasing application or website it should have been properly field tested by your team and your team should have been properly communicating with your retailer in the event like this occurs.

Now many players are upset and rightfully so at your company, I believe that this is a good example of poor leadership, and bad communication, If we are truly your valued player base then you would protect us at any cost. You failed us.

[Avih]

Wait, so all the sudden everyone is giving up because SE made this official statements? Comon ppl, you all try harder when it gets to End contents! why give up now?
Made more tickets available this year? by reducing the cap from Paris to Rio? how many was available anyways? The ticket vendor now admits they've encountered a technical issue at the time of sale and therefore this chaos happened.
It's not a matter of how many go through or not. Doesn't care if it was 5 ppl or 1000 ppl. what matter is that people without the code was able to purchase the ticket and many people with the code couldn't.
Don't let SE and showclix get away from this. then please release that "few" that got through. I don't know what the odds are, but at least give us a chance.

[alimdia]

Greetings

Were there any tickets reserved for the tour partnership from Japan with Square Enix and Nippon Travel Agency? I'm curious how many tickets were unavailable for NA players due to non-NA players reserving said tickets with the tour agency.