Tickets are all gone for fan fest

[Brill_]

Some transparency would probably help out.
1. How many tickets were available?
2. How did the queue work? Lottery? First in first out? If it was FIFO, then a number showing where you are at in the queue would help. If I knew there were 3000 tickets(made up number) for sale and I'm 5000 in queue, well, gg, no tickets for me.

How will this impact next fanfest? Given how fast tickets went and the number of couples or FC that are split, I'd imagine next time EVERYONE will buy 4 tickets just because they can. Even more people won't even get a chance to buy.

They need to drastically increase supply for next time. Larger facility, make a east/west fanfest, or whatever. They need to get a solid read on how many people want to go and figure out a way to accommodate more customers. I'd be interested in seeing what number tried to buy tickets and what percentage of those people actually got tickets.

[Xellos2099]

You probably did! I ran the XI panel for 4-5 years at ACEN, got denied after the combined XI+XIV panel didn't go so well, and went back the next year with a solid XIV panel.

I stopped going to ACEN though because Momocon tended to be a back to back weekend with it, and Momocon is a lot less expensive for me XD But then Momocon, then AWA, stopped giving me the XIV panels, and I'm kind of just burnt out now. Only going to AWA this year to be with the anime club I'm staff adviser for.

I went the year one of the raffle gift was stolen or something. Either way, I think Rosemont center would be a good choice for fanfest. It is pretty decent size. It have "NOTHING" to do with me doing Chicago native. XD

[Machka]

You're right, it was silly of me to think that some people don't have that amount of cash on them at all times. You've enlightened me kind sir.

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.

[Rakuko]

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.

I believe they're saying they're unable to afford more than one tickets, and on one hand, I understand that it's a pricey event (especially if you factor in flights, hotel, transportation to hotel, food, etc), but on the other, I feel that, for most people, this isn't simply a trip to the beach.

Coordination was certainly important, but even with my group of 7, the last two people to score them ran into website issues. Since they were the last 2 of our group to go through, it would have been near impossible for those who had already gone through the purchasing process to do it again in time. Some had even waited until the others had gotten through the queue to the registration page to finalise their transactions. How do you suggest situations like that be resolved?

I understand what you're getting at - things definitely could have been done better- but in some situations, it's honestly quite difficult to.

[ChezaraAsura]

Ok so I do NOT know if this has been mentioned in this thread or not yet, as I am too tired to go through 20 some pages to find out. My apologies for my redundancy if so.

So I was thinking back on the 2014 fanfest. Anyone remember how one of the MC's was walking around and saying "We're going to pack in as many people as the fire code allows! Line up over there to purchase tickets!" They allowed that at THAT fanfest only, people to buy tickets AT THE DOOR! They did NOT do this for the Paris one in 2016 for whatever reason even though the Paris fanfest was BIGGER than the Rio one. 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?

And....another thought that came to me.... although I am not sure the NA community would be able to really come together for something like this but.....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. Now mind you like..... at least a thousand attendees would have to get together on this but imagine if you could get the community together like that?! Where 1000 people stand outside the doors to get in, and 1000 people who have like played all the games inside and stuff then hand their badges to 1000 other people so they can get in and do stuff...then give their badges back to the original owners after. I mean imagine if people could be that trustworthy and kind so that everyone could be at fanfest. Maybe the devs would see this kind of community behavior then and EVERYONE would get in then.

Yeah I know a silly dream, but I can dream of it nonetheless. I went to both fanfests and I just cried when I realized I won't be going to this one....

[CocoChannel]

The Poor Community team response from today was such a disappointed.

They don’t even want to acknowledge how people skipping to the front of the queue sharing the URL affect the others waiting since 12pm which I think is the biggest issue in here.

How can you claim you got more tickets this year if the other years took hours for them to sale,this venue is more smaller than the previous one makes no sense what your stating SE, how are you gonna fix this we got left out cause people skipping in queu you completely ignored that in your response, not even an Apology we hope you have a concret answer in the next live letter this will leave a permanent Stain forever in this Community if you dont fix this awfull situation...
#FFXIVFanFest #RipFFXIVFanfest

[Lainmyst]

You make it sound like the cosplayers/players who did get tickets didn’t deserve them. Or that the majority of the ticket sold went to scalpers and not actual subscribers. My guess is, the majority of the tickets went to players who are just as big a fan like you, just as great a cosplayer as those who had the bad luck of not being able to get tickets. These fans you speak of, whose so quick to pass judgement based on rumors and hearsay aren’t really fans then, just salty, entitled kids.
It’s possible that there’s still an open investigation, it’s completely possible to identify ticket purchased by bots or other questionable means and refund those and put them back up for sale, but I bet even if they recover say 50 tickets theres still going to be a lot of angry , entitled folks anyway...

I have never in my post implied that legit players who were lucky enough to get tickets shouldn't have them. They were just plain lucky. The system shouldn't only rely on pure luck. Myself and others who got into the queue exactly at 12m where messed over by a broken ticket system period that is a fact. I am sure SE is still looking into it. But so far it just seems it will move forward without fixing this issue, that
the many who were cheated at a chance to go. As I said I not once implied those that were lucky to get tickets didn't' deserve them. I don't know how you read that into what I said.

[Avih]

Hey ppl. Let's not make this mess turn into "Ticket holders VS non-ticket whiner" PvP battle! We are all in the same page here. It's just matter of where you stand in this mess.
This is exactly what SE and Showclix want us to do. Make this into PvP battle and make the public think non-ticket whiner is the enemy.
We can't let that happen. Ticket holders showing up here in this thread is our best friend here! Most of ticket holder don't even care(or donno) such thread exists.
We need to reach out to everybody for help, regardless. Have other ticket holder share their experience in this. Let's bring everyone in the same boat and discuss what went wrong here.
Than maybe SE will listen. Let me ask you this, Ticket holders, do you want to go through this mess again in next fanfest? Non-ticket holders, don't you want to have clear/honest answers to what went wrong this time?

Let's all unite. Something most countries can't do, but in Eoerzea, we can!

[Ryuko]

I'm so sorry to everyone who missed out on tickets, whether you have gone every other year or this would have been the first one. I really feel for you, and I wish they would have chosen a larger venue. At first, I was also shocked at how quickly tickets sold out. But... even in my own little bubble, I can understand why. Seven people from my raid static wanted to go this year, up from two in previous years. And I've heard similar stories elsewhere -- lots of people wanted to go for the first time this year. Plus, the game is getting more popular. It makes sense that demand well exceeded availability. We could say we wish SE had seen this coming, but honestly... they are usually very conservative with their estimates, partially due to humility. Maybe they didn't even think it was possible to have an event like this sell out so fast. Even if the signs were there, they might have been like... "Nahhh, no way." I can't imagine the talks going around the various community teams about how exciting that is. While the code being temporarily deactivated is definitely concerning, I honestly don't think there were many people waiting on the off chance they might not need a code. Plus, the window was so small, and people who were even in queue from the beginning missed out. I personally think the 'scalpers' are just posting illegitimate things just to get people heated. It's possible it happened, but we've seen zero evidence besides people 'talking' about it.

Again, I'm so sorry people missed out. I was one of four people in my FC to get tickets, and I bought three of them. So many people who wanted to go weren't able to, and I've got this weird feeling... I'm grateful I got 'lucky', but it really was just luck. And I'm sad my friends are sad, but also sad that the gathering won't be as exciting as it could have been. I hope they'll have more events and larger events in the future.

[Rokke]

Coordination was certainly important, but even with my group of 7, the last two people to score them ran into website issues. Since they were the last 2 of our group to go through, it would have been near impossible for those who had already gone through the purchasing process to do it again in time. Some had even waited until the others had gotten through the queue to the registration page to finalise their transactions. How do you suggest situations like that be resolved?

I understand what you're getting at - things definitely could have been done better- but in some situations, it's honestly quite difficult to.

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.


ie. Me and my friends like to go to SDCC. There are 4 of us. Many conventions (including sdcc) have a max of 4 tickets per transaction. Each of us goes into the ticket sale ready to buy all 4 tickets, so we only need 1 person to get lucky with the queue. Each of us splintering off to only buy our own would severely gimp our chances of getting the whole group in. There was no reason for the last two of your party to struggle when they could/should have been bundled with those that went through before.