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[PRIME] PAX Prime 2012 is COMPLETELY SOLD OUT!
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Then say twice the number of people who up at PAX then there are passes available. What then?
Passes at the door is of most benefit to the locals. I think it would be a bad idea to travel to Seattle, get a hotel, and show up at the door without a badge in the hopes that you'll get one. That will, however, reduce demand for the badges leading up to the event, and put the scalpers in a somewhat disadvantaged position. Fact is, most PAX attendees are local. If these people don't get one, many will simply go home.
And if that's not a tenable situation, hey, the scalpers are right there to take your money at that point
I think a lot of you are getting caught up in trying to come up with a perfect solution, and it will never happen. Solutions that mitigate the unsavory aspect of the convention (scalping) are really the best any can hope for.
"Pictochat? No. Dicktochat!"
I should specify, my numbers why hypothetical. I assumed a 10% scalp rate was pretty damn high. I have no knowlege of the actual rate.
@Quintious,
This may affect scalping it may not. You'd need demographic data on attendees to dertmine that. If a signficant portion of people come from out of town, they may be willing to pay a scalper to ensure a ticket. If I were dead set on going to pax (and it costs me $300 in plane tickets, plus hotel) I'd be willing to spend a ton on tickets to ensure I had them lest I get out to Seattle and have bupkis but a trip to seattle I suppose. (Questions about authenticity of the ticket aside, we'll assume most scalpers aren't selling fake tickets, because if they are, no amount of tweaking the sale system will change that, you'd need other things, which important but not for this disccusion right now.)
Similarly, more complext methods to tie badges to a single individual may just not work. I thought the same as well last year before my First PAX. Then I saw how hectic the WSCC is. There'd be no time to check badges against proper ownership, it'd just be too damn tough. (This is not the same as saying "they couldnt' check for fake badges." Different problem)
I think the frustration is valid. PA said they would make an announcement via the site and the official twitter when it all went live again. They weren't really loud enough about that, IMO. The first I had heard about all this was when I woke up to the news that they were already sold out. I wasn't going to be able to go this year, anyway, but my friends who had all been planning to return are all out in the cold now. PAX is made up of a lot of different types of gamers, one or more of those types being some who aren't able to check the registration website all day every day, so passes selling out in mere hours means they never really had a shot in the first place. None of my friends have a pass for that very reason and I wouldn't either, if other things weren't already in the way of my attendance.
This is exactly what I was thinking about when I said limit the number of badges sold per card to ONE.... If you have a child your purchasing for, there is things the site could do to accommodate for that with enough effort for sure, ALL those over the age of 18 could obtain a debit/CC or a prepaid visa card to purchase... so with one card, one ticket, one person and a barcode on the ticket or name, we could eliminate the problem that everyone did not get the "chance" to buy a ticket... it will make your friends/ family/ co workers (etc) actually put forth the effort needed to actually go to the event and give a fair option for everyone. Also releasing during work probably was not percieved as a problem for PAX folks guys... they lasted 3 weeks last time, this time 1000% faster lol Not your guys faults but limiting the number purchased per person would have slowed down the sell out process for sure and gave ample opportunity for all to have a chance to purchase without to many complaints
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A bigger venue would let more people in, and there would be more room for setup. But it'd probably have to be out of state... (Vegas!) which may limit some of the smaller companies that show up that are local. Also, it could just lead to longer lines for everything, what with more people.
A longer event would be cool. A whole week of PAX! But, it'd be harder to get volunteers, particularly the ones manning all the company booths (I have no doubt Enforcers would show up in force). Plus, many people would just buy the whole week, causing a sell-out situation again.
A bigger venue & longer event would suffer the same problems as the above two points, but would be cool
A third PAX... but as we've seen with PAX East, some people will go to both and PAX East hasn't really alleviated the problem of sell-outs at PAX Prime. It's getting faster each year. Unless they could implement some sort of registration system that prevented people from attending multiple PAXs (but any such thing would have potentially easy bypasses)
Maybe some sort of lottery selection rather than first come, first serve. Would be more fair for people who couldn't get online to buy in the opening hours, but will still leave a lot of disappointed people. Plus, makes group travel difficult if you don't know if your buddies are getting selected.
Make tickets more expensive. Not a good idea, goes against the spirit of PAX.
Prevent scalping. Yet to be seen how big of a problem it will be this year. A lot of the scalping last year was fake badges. Additional security/checkpoints (especially at an 'open' venue like WSCC) will cause headaches & lines.
So, I guess what I'm saying is... most solutions have their pros & cons, not any one is perfect. I can only hope the whole PA office has their thinking caps on because I don't want this to turn into another Blizzcon type madhouse.
Except they /did/ make an announcement on the main site and the official twitter when it went live again. They did exactly what they said they were going to do. Also, a huge amount of people on twitter were RTing it all over the place. Twitter was ABLAZE with activity. Saying it wasn't loud is just plain wrong.
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As many of you are feeling as well. I am completely shocked to see the passes go so fast compared to the previous years. People tend to sell off their badges the week of the event, the prices then won't be ridiculously gouged as of right now but rather more reasonable. In addition, SD Comic-Con is alot faster in terms of how fast it sells out.
I got mine and most of my buddies that are road tripping down there did also except for 1 guy that delayed 3 hours and had to buy singles for 40$ more. Most of us don't "tweet". We do all read penny arcade religiously and come to this website during the day.
gamertag: Canadianllama
I got super lucky and was able to get two 3-day passes. While PAX is growing exponentially I think the sudden sell out had alot to do with the first crash. It brought a whole lot of attention to the site and people panicked..."what if the server crashes again? What if people try to repurchase tickets after the initial crash?" So folks like me and folks like you hunkered down and wore out our F5s. Next year may be just as bad but I believe it'll be because of what happened here...We'll freak and think about how thousands of passes sold out in less than 48 hours. I do like the idea of names on the badges. I think it's a small risk to take to ensure passes are going to Pax goers.
[X] Train tix
[_] Finish Vivi costume
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"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
The percentage of people that go to PAX that have no clue what Penny Arcade is (as a webcomic) is growing steadily.
Twitter is just a reality these days for quick communication. If you want to be notified about something quickly, you subscribe to that "something's" twitter account. Breaking news usually hits twitter faster than anywhere else. You don't have to actively tweet in order to follow things on twitter, and you can set things up as text notifications to your phone.
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Sucks to see passes already on eBay however...
I realize they made the announcement they promised and didn't mean to imply otherwise. What I'm saying is, after your systems have been down for a week, maybe you need to approach the announcement of open registration in a different way. Given a few days to buy tickets after the way they chose to announce it, everything probably would have been fine. If you expect at all that your tickets may sell out in a manner of hours, you have to handle this situation another way. I work 11 hour shifts at my job and have odd hours. I am certainly not the only PAX-goer who is not near enough a computer I can use to purchase tickets at all hours. Even if I had seen the tweet from my phone, I couldn't have responded quick enough to buy tickets regardless. I wasn't even at work, but was just playing Pathfinder with my PAX-attending friends when all this happened. Things in life keep me from my computer for more than five hours and that is true of everyone. Zerzhul, if you have a pass, you should feel lucky and recognize that others who don't have passes are allowed to feel upset that they aren't.
And your idea completely screws over any couple/family that has a joint bank account and no credit cards, only one debit card. It also effectively does nothing to a person such as myself, who has 13 personal credit cards and 2 more corporate cards I can use and just reimburse my company on.
People who say this are saying it would be useful to stop scalpers. They also assume that scalpers are the reason it sold out.
Let's say I'm only willing to pay a maximum of $165. Right now, a scalper can buy all the passes, and as long as I'm willing to pay $165, they will make a $100 profit. If the prices go up to say, $135, I'm willing to pay the $165 still, but scalpers get less profit, $30. Eventually you find the point where the profit gained is not worth the time and effort for the scalpers.
forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/140560/all-passes-are-now-sold-out-anticipation-for-badges-starts-now/p1
According to the oregoncc.org website, it's a tad larger than the WSCC, but the size difference is negligible.
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The system is fair. PAX is popular.
Except for the fact that Portland sucks, the hotels can't handle the amount of people that Seattle can, and Portland has nowhere near the built-in population that would attend the event that Seattle does.
But the scalpers will still sell the $135 ticket for $250, and somebody would still buy it.
Your view ignores the larger picture--making tickets more expensive doesn't change the fact that they sell out, nor will it decrease scalping. All it will do is make going to PAX prohibitively expensive for people not located in that region (e.g - West Coast for PAX Prime). You do realize that, for someone from the Midwest to go in a non-huge group, this trip is almost $1,000, not including merchandise purchases or other Seattle activities? And you want to raise the price? That's ridiculous... not everyone has a large wallet for this type of thing...
Also downtown Seattle is awesome.
And seriously, don't have a twitter? Get a twitter. There's zero reason not to, except hipster elitism or neckbeards privacy paranoia. In which case have fun not going to PAX.
This is your hint. Don't wait until next April, just go get on the twitters. Now. It's how shit works now. Complaining about it won't get you into PAX.
A: Portland doesn't suck, thanks
B: I think you might be right about hotels in the immediate area of the Portland Convention Center.
C. You act like PAX won't sell out regardless of the "built-in population" whatever that means.
1) It's very difficult to determine where the magic number is that wards off scalpers by cutting into their profit margins.
2) You're pricing normal people out of the event a hell of a lot sooner than scalpers. They sell their shit to desperate people - people that are typically willing to spend a lot more on passes than your average attendee.
I don't see an issue with having to input a name for each pass you buy, and then check IDs alongside passes. That way you can buy passes for friends so long as you know their names, and scalpers wouldn't have anyone to sell to unless that person somehow made a fake ID on the spot. Only problem is having to deny people with no ID on the spot, but that can be mitigated with advanced warning.
Before you throw the can't access a computer etc at me, I'm currently overseas in the mid. east with the military
Yeah, I misread the sizes. It is not a lot bigger. So it goes.
Heeeeeey, it's not my view. I said "people think" and "they assume." I was just explaining.
gamertag: Canadianllama
"Look at that subtle off-white coloring, the tasteful thickness of it... Oh my God, it even has a watermark."
I don't believe that the PAX organizers said that they would tweet about quantities this year (if they did, what I'm saying obviously doesn't apply). It's been said multiple times now - do not base your plans for this year based on what happened last year. It's entirely possible and likely that the PAX staff were completely flabbergasted that the 3-Day passes sold out in 4.5 hours on Tuesday - based on last year's rates, someone was probably going to check inventory after 6-8 hours and post about it then, but obviously things went faster than even that expectation. I'm sure they will learn from it and improve for next year.
[X] 4 1-Day Passes [X] Hotel Booked [ ] Buttons Ordered [ ] Challenge Coin Ordered
[ ] Pre-PAX Dinner Tickets [ ] Girls Meetup Tickets [ ] Waiting Patiently...
PAX Prime Attendee since 2006, BYOC Attendee 2008-2012, Buttoneer since 2010
They thought wrong. Every year there are people who say "BUT IT SOLD OUT AT X TIME LAST YEAR, I DIDN'T GET A BADGE!" Yes it's worse this year, but there's ALWAYS complaining about how it's selling out faster and faster each year. Anyone that thinks they know how long it will take to sell out a popular event is ALREADY WRONG.
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