Are all fan festivals like this?

[IndyPendant]

I was one of the lucky ones to win the chance to buy a ticket for the Fan Festival. This was my first one, of any type. I didn't go in with high expectations, I was curious to see what I would find. My experience so far has been...frankly terrible.

Registration was the day before. Lineup was absurdly long, literally one city block. But that lineup also moved rather fast, impressively so in my opinion, so that I was only waiting less than an hour to register. This was one of the few positive impressions I've been left with.

Security seemed...bizarre, honestly. We could only use bags the size of the tiny packs we were provided on registration or smaller. (Roughly the size of a large purse.) No outside food and drink--obviously so we'd buy it on location. Water had to be emptied at the checkpoint and refilled inside, like an airport. Odd, but whatever.

The registration goodies consisted of that tiny day pack, a keyring gemstone, a paissa magnet, a carrot pen, a square grape squeeze ball, and a 10th anniversary pin. Seemed a bit meager for a $200 con, but I honestly don't have a basis of comparison here, maybe I'm being uncharitable, I'd like to hear opinions. (Oh, and they included a single FFXIV TCG booster pack, like a drug dealer offering the first hit for free.)

It was today, the first day of the fanfest, that things just...really went to crap.

Per the schedule: the convention doors opened at 7am; the fanfest doors opened at 9am. Intention was we had to pass a security check before entering the fanfest, and then at 10am would be Yoshi's address. I arrived around 8am, no real lineup, explored a bit, came back to the FFXIV entrance around 8:30, there were hundreds of people packed in the hall like sardines. Whoops. Joined the crowd (not the line, the crowd), and waited. Around 9:20 or so, we finally started moving, and we just walked right past security through airport-like gates as a horde, no real security checks conducted.

(I later heard there were lineups outside that extended for blocks, that were still slowly shuffling forward around 10am. In over-40-degree desert heat. Apparently, no one bothered to come out and tell them they could have just walked inside. Thankfully I was spared that!)

We get inside the main hall, there are maybe 3,000 chairs for 15,000 attendees. Most had to sit on the floor, or stand and watch for 2 hours. The keynote address was actually kind of cool, it was an amazing experience being in a large hall with 15,000 other fans cheering at each reveal. (I'm, uh, bringing earplugs for Day 2. ; ) Loved that part. But then the CEO of Microsoft walks on stage and it turns into a 20+ minute corporate XBox commercial. I finally got up and left, 15 minutes into that.

Or, I tried to. One of the events was labelled as a Battle Royale: an upcoming 8-man trial, I think? At the same time (and in the same convention hall), merchandise was being sold. Everyone was just sort of crowded together, shuffling forward, sort of hoping we were going in the right direction. No staff to guide or organize us. Eventually, 20 minutes into this slow shuffle, word of mouth passed back from the front that merchandise should stay left, battle royale should stay right.

You could pre-register for the battle royale, which I did, for the second time slot, 1-2pm (the prior one was 11:30-1pm, I think?). The opening address had run late, and after half an hour of shuffling uncertainly forward it was now 12:30 and I couldn't even see the hall we were supposed to enter yet. Someone nearby loudly proclaimed that those who pre-registered should push forward, he seemed to know what he was talking about, and so I followed him. Still don't know if he was right, I may have "budged" forward about halfway through the crowd, and if so I do apologize to my fellow attendees. But there were literally no staff clarifying anything.

After an hour of this uncertainty, I finally enter the huge hall hosting the Battle Royale. The lineup continues halfway down the hall, we continue to slowly shuffle forward. I'm scanned, my registration confirmed...and I join another line. Wait another 40 minutes or so until I finally sit down at a computer around 2pm with 7 other players. We're playing pre-made characters, thankfully only one player wanted healer and didn't play WHM, so I got the easymode healer role. 5-10 minutes to configure hotbars, 10-15 minutes of fight...and we're done. Our reward after two hours of waiting: a scanned badge on the fanfest app. More on that later.

I see there's a washroom at the end of the hall, I make a dive for it. Cross a line to get there, come out and ask what's it for? "FOOD!" someone responds emphatically. This line had hundreds of people in it. I was suddenly very grateful for my smuggled-in trail mix!

Finally I decided to wander the con itself. One kind of neat setup: they had staff standing under quest markers, giving us quests. One involved taking a perspective-picture where we seemed to holding up a huge blue globe dangling from the ceiling; another involve us recording ourselves dancing on a dance floor; a third had us tracking down fish in a barrel and selfie-ing us holding our nose over it. There were six of the, and they were kind of fun, honestly.

The stations were...less so. One had magnetic fishing rods used to snag magnetic fish cutouts. Another seemed to be some kind of ball toss? A third was literally just a FFXIV snapchat station. There was a library mockup that looked interesting, but I don't know what it was about. It all seemed...traveling circus like. Cheap and kitschy. There were about six in total, and each station had hundreds of attendees at it, slowly shuffling forward in snaking lines, taking up to an hour (maybe more?) to get through.

The goal of these things--including the Battle Royale--was to unlock "badges" in the fanfest app. Once you unlocked three, you...got in line. Shuffled slowly forward for another hour or so. Your reward at the end of the day for all the cool activities? A roughly 10x15-inch printed poster...and a tiny sticker. There was no benefit to completing more badges. That and the registration pack is the sum total of the freebies we got at the fanfest. The real kicker? There were three stickers available; we had to choose one.

I spent 4-5 hours today literally just standing or slowly shuffling in lines, sometimes not even knowing if I was in the right spot. Most (all?) of the major scheduled events were streamed anyway. The gifts seem cheaply made, pretty much worthless.

Some of the good points: the "quests" were kinda fun. The other attendees were all great, as were some of the costumes. Being in a crowd of fans was a neat experience.

Overall though, day one seems like a major disappointment. This is my first fanfest. Are they all like this? And if so...why do people go, particularly when it's so expensive? Am I missing something? Am I maybe just not the target audience?

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Unless Im just unlucky...isnt this most events that have alot in Attendance?

[TheNight]

You are not alone.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...tical_failure/

This has been the worst Fanfare in a long while, in terms of organization.

[raelgun]

Overall though, day one seems like a major disappointment. This is my first fanfest. Are they all like this? And if so...why do people go, particularly when it's so expensive? Am I missing something? Am I maybe just not the target audience?

Cons are mostly boring, if you ever see videos, you may notice its just mostly cosplayers taking photos and nothing much about the con it self.

The con prices in the past were not these prices, at least ages ago.

Fanfests are not any different to a con other then the keynotes at the start, sadly they don't offer spectating sports either like Blizzcon does.

However with this fanfest being so in demand, it feels like a bunch of ERPers were being hopeful meeting another ERPer.

[Syln]

Sound like an irl equivalent of the Endwalker launch login queue.

[Alleluia]

If the Azem keychain sucks so much, can I have it? lol


I think a lot of cons are like that, yeah. I'd expect more staff direction than you described, but that might be effected by the attendance. Not having nearly enough chairs when they know how many attendees they sold tickets is a fail, though.

[Carin-Eri]

I attended Star Trek conventions in 1995 & 1996. They were much like what was described in the OP even then, although the security aspect was likely even more minimal.

Doesn't sound as if things have changed much in terms of how these events are organised/managed.

[Jeeqbit]

(I later heard there were lineups outside that extended for blocks, that were still slowly shuffling forward around 10am. In over-40-degree desert heat. Apparently, no one bothered to come out and tell them they could have just walked inside. Thankfully I was spared that!)

We get inside the main hall, there are maybe 3,000 chairs for 15,000 attendees.

To be fair, SE is most likely not handling all this themselves but outsourcing it to the venue's staff they hired or something like that. And such a venue should be used to this sort of thing.

But then the CEO of Microsoft walks on stage and it turns into a 20+ minute corporate XBox commercial.

I don't think that normally happens at all. It had me facepalming because it was not a very good example of what fanfests are normally like, and they sort of ruined the atmosphere. At least it was at the end though and that was probably intentional so that people who are bored can leave or stop watching.

The CEO ruined the atmosphere a little at the start as well, because only Yoshi-P and the community team know how to talk to fans. I literally saw SE's camera pan over the text that the CEO was about to read, and they did read it shortly thereafter (yes the CEO was reading a teleprompt). Teleprompts just aren't a good way to connect with fans and make you seem like a politician.

What made the Xbox part so much worse was that everyone there and everyone watching is already playing on another platform and doesn't need to care about this Xbox version. So they spent 20 minutes trying to ask the crowd to be excited about something that they, frankly, didn't care one way or another about.

Not normally like that, but let's be fair, they had to announce the Xbox version somehow and they had been working hard on it for a long time in the background, so they would feel proud of their work and want to express it. Just was more long-winded than it needed to be.

You could pre-register for the battle royale, which I did, for the second time slot, 1-2pm (the prior one was 11:30-1pm, I think?). The opening address had run late, and after half an hour of shuffling uncertainly forward it was now 12:30

I finally sit down at a computer around 2pm with 7 other players.

I think these fanfests are larger than they've done before, so they might not be used to handling quite this amount. But if that's true then they have the opportunity to learn from it for the other fanfests.

Most (all?) of the major scheduled events were streamed anyway.

Of course they are. The benefit for you is the opportunity to be there in person, see them with your own eyes, potentially interact with the developers and streamers/content creators. There is one unique thing for you though, which is not streamed and that's the music and Primals concerts, where the band including Soken play FFXIV tracks live with instruments.

Another thing you get to do, potentially, is participate in the cosplay contest (too late now, it already happened).

And if so...why do people go, particularly when it's so expensive? Am I missing something? Am I maybe just not the target audience?

The atmosphere. The feeling. Meeting the people you normally play with, who are not really the same as the average people you meet everywhere else, because the game attracts a certain audience. Seeing the developers, streamers and content creators in person. Participating in cosplay contests or being there to witness the Primals play FFXIV tracks in person.

The rest of what you described is just fluff to distribute people between different places so they aren't all doing the same thing at once but since you are doing this with the other people in the queue, you can still feel you are doing it with people who play the game like you do.

Shouldn't expect it to be perfect though. You are recommended to use earplugs because of the noise, it's going to be a nightmare with that many people breathing in one location, queues are going to be long. All of that is predictable when you see how many people are attending though.

[Lieri]

Sounds very crowded and exhausting. I will never be part of any fanfest of anything even if I could because chances are im gonna get lost and die.

[Alleluia]

Sounds very crowded and exhausting. I will never be part of any fanfest of anything even if I could because chances are im gonna get lost and die.

Dramatic, but technically possible, I guess? lol