Tickets are all gone for fan fest

[Rofel]

The community team is the only channel we have. No one is lashing on them; the answer just wasn't enough - and usually isn't on MOST of the problems reported on the forum for a while now.

[Melchar]

Exactly, they are a conduit through which the brand communicates. The message we got was a step up from your usual PR ass covering device. Some timely ownership over the misleading nature of the sale and the codes and some transparency would be nice. But as time passes, my hope for them to do the right thing is waning.

[raionheart]

(1/2)
Posting here to what I said on Reddit:

Just want to add some data points to the discussion.

1. Everyone queued in ASAP. So when I see posts about how they queued in 0.0001 second so did everyone else and their guild at that time. It will be hard to say how the queue was processed with everyone queueing simultaneously.

2. The member base is growing. Most people waited for the fanfest to have a few trial runs before deciding to go. Our guild and in-game friends decided to do it this year because that has given us enough time to have known each other. So it's not weird that tickets sold out faster than previous years. It would not make sense to compare the attendance to the inaugural event to 2nd event. It was bound to scale by 3rd event. Also there is some Nippon-tour partnership square-enix is doing so a portion of tickets may have already been claimed by that as well. We might see a lot of Japanese players in Las Vegas this year, which, I'm pretty excited about.

3. Here are some data points of our guild's ticket buying experience:

Just to note: When I say "get in" I mean past the queue and directly into the purchasing screen where it requests the code. All of these data points below are from queueing into the queue right at 12pm PT.

One of our members was able to get to the ticket screen at exactly 12pm PT. A code was required. It took forever to take his code. There were times he was afraid his session will time out since the timer was going but the page was not loading. He got the timed out error "10.250.1.31:27017: Read timed out after reading 0 bytes, waited for 30.000000 seconds". After awhile and refreshing a couple of times he was able to complete his purchase at 12:12 pm PT. He ordered 1 ticket. He later regrets not buying the max. 4 amount since a few of our guild members couldn't get a ticket ):

Our next member was able to get in at 12:22pm PT. A code was required. He was stuck on the loading screen after entering the name of ticket holders. He was able to complete his purchase at 12:26pm PT. He ordered 2 tickets.

I was able to get in at 12:22pm PT. A code was required. I was also stuck in the loading screen after the ticket holder info. I received an 500 error "We're sorry — something seems off. It's possible that you're seeing this page because your request is taking a little longer than usual. Please try again shortly. Our engineering team has been notified of this incident and will be looking into it for you." and I freaked out in panic mode as I heard from others that they got the sold out message. Thankfully refreshing solved it. I was able to complete my purchase at 12:29pm PT. Got the confirmation email at 12:30pm PT. I ordered 4 tickets.

Sadly my other members and friends got the "All tickets have been reserved, more tickets may become available as people decide not to complete their purchase" at 12:24pm PT. However, I had another friend who had the sold out message but didn't give up. He kept refreshing and was able to get him and his friends tickets. Ticket purchase count unknown, Im assuming 4. A code was required.

[raionheart]

(2/2)

Based on this data the first sold out message came at 12:24pm PT. However some tickets were released minutes after that and people that kept refreshing was able to purchase released tickets. In all our attempts a code was required before being able to proceed with purchase screens even for those that were not able to get a ticket. I wonder for those who did not need a code clicked directly from their the email which would have their code recognized. Vs. someone copying the page link with their code in a notepad to use later which wouldn't have registered the code details from the email cookie. But I don't think we should get so hung up on the code issues since I feel that people who were trying their best to get tickets were there legitimately and legitimately wanted to go. I think the discussion should float more around anticipating a higher volume and seeking a larger venue rather than downsizing it. From what I read, Rio is a much smaller venue than Paris. If their data person on their team wasn't too sure based on previous attendance, then their marketing team should've sent a short survey out to players to get a rough estimate.

Some of our members who were not able to get a ticket are considering going to Vegas anyways just to meet-up with the guild and go into a food coma from all the buffets. XD;

With that being said, if the rumors of people with purchasing more than 4 tickets is true and not just some troll fanning the flames. Then Square Enix should really look into that and cancelling their extra tickets and putting it back into the system as a last chance batch.

[Omegabear]

Wow, I'm surprised that that many people want to go to this event. I deleted 2 e-mails inviting me to buy the ticket.

[ExKage]

The community team is the only channel we have. No one is lashing on them; the answer just wasn't enough - and usually isn't on MOST of the problems reported on the forum for a while now.

Not even a page earlier from this are people acting as if a) the community team is at fault for the PR response and b) that the team is unprofessional.

That's the fault on their bosses, aka SE top, not on the community team.

[Rokke]

What I'm trying to say here is, the mess we are currently going through with this fanfest fiasco all ties down to NA team's poor decisions & managements led them to connect with wrong organizations.
If they didn't chose Showclix for ticketing vendor, if they didn't chose Rio for the venue, if they have considered "pre-orders" instead of "pre-sales", things might have been a lot better for majorities of the players.

Small note, though I agree with most of it (disorganization, code planning being half baked), the Rio isn't inherently a bad venue. Its not my fav hotel in Vegas as I'd much rather be on the strip, but it actually can hold a lot of people. The issue is that SE only rents out 1 event room. They did the same at the Paris- we shared the event area with some Navy event one day and what looked to be a wedding reception another day.

SB has been heavily promoted and we reached a new high with the active player population after its release, they should have expected more people would try to attend. If SE wants to continue to host the event in Vegas they really need to book multiple rooms.

[Rofel]

Not even a page earlier from this are people acting as if a) the community team is at fault for the PR response and b) that the team is unprofessional.

That's the fault on their bosses, aka SE top, not on the community team.

That's why its important that the community team take this feedback to their top dogs, since their response wasn't helpful at all. And a response like that paints SE as a whole as unprofessional.

[Avih]

Not even a page earlier from this are people acting as if a) the community team is at fault for the PR response and b) that the team is unprofessional.

That's the fault on their bosses, aka SE top, not on the community team.

The HQ(Boss) is in Japan. NA team is dealing with non-native English speakers here. They are pretty much on their own to make important decisions in this region.
Foxclon(JP Comm Top) specifically stated in the JP thread yesterday that NA fanfest is mainly run by the NA team, so any concerns need to be taken to them.

with that being said, NA team was responsible for booking Rio, insists players to get discounted hotel rooms many days prior to the ticket sale dates, and using Showclix resulting in this mess.
Yes, SE USA Top gave them the final approval, but they are just there to sign paper works. All the details are finalized by the team.

I was the one who created the JP thread so there you go.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...81%8B%EF%BC%9F

At this point, most of the non-ticket holders are not whining to earn tickets, all we are demanding is a simple, honest answer and apology to this mess.
They've already admitted there was a system glitch(disabling crucial access code program) in showclix during the sales,
god knows what could've gotten affected by this diabling issue, but there's fairly large number of ppl complaing(not whining) unlike the previous years with fair competition.
The statement they made in this thread is not clarifying nor apologizing at all.

[Melchar]

The statement they made in this thread is not clarifying nor apologizing at all.

Thank you Avih, what you said sums it up clearly. If they would just confront this and not try to brush us off with such a lame duck response I think it would ease the suffering and anger.

Some ownership would certainly be nice. If they want to dance around it maybe it can be brought up during a panel Q&A at fan fest.

I know I’ve commented a few times in this thread already. I’m normally not vocal on the forums but this really rubbed me the wrong way. I’m also speaking for several folks at the moment, but I’m sure if they continue to let this go they’ll come here and start chiming in too.