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[PRIME] PAX Prime 2012 is COMPLETELY SOLD OUT!
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Staticwave Entertainment
AIM DJMLORD2001
Look, ANY idea will leave someone out, including any idea you might have.
Also, the WSCC /is/ a small venue. Take a look around the country at major convention centers. The WSCC is /small/.
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Incorrect. We're still paying for the Kingdome. They wanted to use the tax levy that was used to create Safeco and Centurylink Field to expand the convention center. Which the public wanted no part of - we've got a real problem in this state with politicians not giving up revenue streams when they get one, and those temporary taxes for the stadiums was supposed to be just that - temporary. The public had to put their collective foot down on this otherwise we'd have never shed that tax on us - after the convention center, it would have just been something else.
The issue with the convention center is where it's placed. They put it in the most stupid place possible (directly over I-5) which causes a lot of infrastructure problems, particularly as how it limits the ability to expand the interstate to accommodate traffic needs of a fast-growing region. The public isn't a big fan of the convention center in general, so we certainly weren't going to allow it to grow any further. Eventually we're going to just have to build a whole new convention center somewhere else.
Looking at other cons, that are in larger venues, and given the relatively marginal increase in size you're talking about, what makes you think a move would solve the issue? Rather than make some marginal difference, that may be wiped out by a year of growth anyway?
Is it worth moving Prime out of PA's home so that badges can sell out in two days instead of one?
Especially since many things, like key panels and expo booths, are still going to be space-limited in the new venue. Meaning you're trading one headache (getting into the con at all) for another (doing anything once you're there).
Adding another venue may make sense, if the people involved can handle doing so. Two cons is already a handful. Changing venues won't really solve anything.
Bet money East sells out faster this year, too.
1) Twitter has been used to announce reg for both PAX and the BYOC tickets for several years now. I have exactly one Twitter feed that texts my phone whenever a post is made - the BYOC ticket feed. I also check the forums once a day once East is done, just in case.
2) If you are unable to respond to the reg going live within an hour, then you need to make plans to have someone else do it for you. Going to be in class or at work with no computer access? Get your spouse, your parent, your best friend, your brother, SOMEONE to be willing to buy the passes when you text them to do so. Really, there are very few jobs or classes in this world where you can't get to a computer or use your phone to buy passes within 30-60 minutes, and if you have one of those then you already know what to do.
3) THERE IS NOWHERE ELSE TO GO IN SEATTLE FOR PAX PRIME. Please stop asking for it, blaming PA for not going to a bigger venue, and so on. Someone posted a comparison/list of all the square footage available in Seattle, and the WSCC is the biggest site by quite a bit, especially with the addition of the Paramount and the ballrooms at the Sheraton.
4) Yes, the price for passes should probably go up, and at least make the cost of a 3-day pass more than the cost of two 1-day passes. Supply and demand at work, there's nothing elitist about it. I don't go to Comic-Con or GenCon because I can't afford the airfare plus the hotel plus the passes, so if that's the case for PAX for someone else, that's just the way life rolls.
5) PAX passes go on sale in the spring. If you are so tight on money that you can't buy passes until you're paid, then you're doing it wrong. Set aside your money well before PAX East happens, and you'll be just fine when reg hits for PAX Prime.
6) Yes, tickets should absolutely have names printed on them (on the back, perhaps, for those who are paranoid) and be tied to a government-issued ID. Blizzcon does this, and aside from having to wait in an extra line the day before the con, it was really no trouble at all for the attendees. This would help minimize the scalping issue, although I still don't think that's as big a deal as some people are saying.
I've successfully bought tickets for Blizzcon before, and PAX registration is still small potatoes compared to that. When going to PAX requires being on Ventrilo with ten other people, all waiting in queue to see who can get the tickets first and having that first person buy for the whole group, then it will be a problem. Right now, everyone's whines could've been solved with a bit of pre-planning and some vigilance.
[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
Well I am a selfish drunken prick so what do you expect? ^_^
The difference being that in previous years it took a couple weeks so potential sympathy was nill. This year it sold out in hours and people who were on the ball as best they could were getting hosed as they were checking out. This year is unprecedented and a potential harbinger of the very Blizzcon shenanigans you are talking about.
And for the record, I do have badges secured so my posts aren't "baww I can't go." They're more "holy shit I got lucky." Especially since I'm on ship grade internet and had to basically sneak computer access.
Agreed. There's already a move away from trading of passes so we might as well go the extra step and make them non-transferable entirely.
PAX 2013 STATUS - Badges: PURCHASED Hotel: RESERVED Vacation: Awaiting approval Plane Tickets: Waiting on vacation approval.
I know a lot of people are saying "Turning into the SDCC" like it's a terrible thing but the fact as I see it is you throw a fantastic event with great people, it's gonna get popular. That said, call "elite buying yelp club" if you will but it would be nice to be able to buy next years tickets at this years event like SDCC does.
Giving your best "customers" a chance to remain customers isn't elitist or preferential.. it's just good business.
Yeah guys, if you can't be at a computer at the drop of a moments notice, or your cell phone reception sucks, or you work at a job that blocks a bunch of content like the PAX site, for instance, you need to stop being so lazy and get your family members who know nothing about computers and don't even like to use credit cards online or your friends who probably don't even know what PAX is, much less care enough to buy passes for you, or perhaps are just as busy away from their computers as you are.
Because, you know, people don't have bills or rent or anything, or are college students on tight budgets, or had a sudden expense pop up unexpectedly, etc...
Yeah, I'm sure that's it. I mean, It sucks three day passes sold out before I even knew they were up, and I'm glad I grabbed Friday and Saturday passes last night before those too are gone, but this whole "stop whining and learn to camp out by your computer and start saving your money noob" attitude is kinda off putting.
The point is that demand will continue to rise, and capacity will not. This has been true for every PAX. This year has shown many people that they need to take measures if they want to have a better shot at getting a pass.
As far as the money goes, it's not bad advice to tell someone "if you want to do something that costs money, you should try to save that money in advance".
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I think my problem is more with the tone of the advice. I definitely understand "shit sells out, yo!" I just have a problem with the "maybe you guys shouldn't have been so damn lazy" attitude.
So you have no friends, no family, nobody who you would trust to be competent enough to buy you tickets if you're not available? Truly, nobody? Not even a forum friend or gaming guildmate? Granted, with a response like that, I can see why.
It's called planning ahead, and it's called life. If you want to go to PAX, you plan ahead and budget for it in time - if you can only afford to buy the pass in July, then you're not going to be able to go that same year - but you could set aside that money in July for the next PAX. And yes, sometimes paying bills or having an unexpected expense means you have to give up the fun stuff, welcome to adulthood!
Your post just proves my point.
I've skipped meetings at work for buying tickets for things that I care about immensely, because it's worth it to me. If I couldn't skip the meeting, I'd have someone else do it for me (and I have in the past). To not make arrangements to handle buying tickets for something that I am very interested in attending, and then not be able to get them because they sold out quickly, does not give me the right to moan and whine about it later.
[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
This is true.
[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
That's because this forum has good moderation.
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It's been suggested. It won't happen.
paxprank.org | paxcommunity.net | Steam | XBL
Yes, because I'm a gigantic asshole, and nobody loves me
I never heard back from them and didn't see any charge backs on my CC account. Registration comes around yesterday & I try to log into my account to see what I have, but because they haven't transferred over all the information from the prior registration, I wasn't able to log in & see if I had 2 3-day passes or not.
This morning I check my CC statement & the charge back went through this morning. So I only have 1 3-day pass and my friend can't go, all because of the slow response time & how quickly the 3-day passes sold out. I was sitting at my computer waiting to book the hotel and could have bought the 2nd 3-day pass again when it went live.
[ ] PAX Coin Ordered/Reserved
For the record, the only reason I don't attend PAX East is because it is clear on the other side of the country, making it inconvenient for me.
Seeing that 3-day and Saturday passes sold out so fast makes me feel bad because I didn't tell my not-so-PAX-crazy friends about registration right away. They really wanted to go but just still don't really believe me when I say they sell out so fast.
I just feel bad because this is going to affect more than just the people who aren't able to go (which doesn't make them irresponsible crybabies), but a lot of people go in coordinated groups that will be missing a person or two that was planning on going but missed the frenzy.
There are a considerable amount of solutions to scalping that don't screw over legitimate attendees, and I'm betting that dicked a lot more folks over than not being able to get to a computer in time. I'm highly disappointed to see that no effort was taken to address that problem this year, but I'll be really fucking galled if that's still the case next year.
I can see being upset that you missed out, but being mad at PAX, the venue, Seattle, whatever, is unreasonable unless the way they do business had changed - which it hasn't. They can't cater to everyone's schedule. So people want them to raise the price to slow down sell-outs just so YOU have a chance? You HAD a chance. Everyone had the SAME chance to get passes and there just happened to be more of them than there are of you.
It is also hard to blame scalpers when, as it was said earlier, tens* of badges are being scalped.
That being said, econmics says when demand outpaces supply, you raise prices until you find a balance.
Charging more is not the answer. See Burning Man. Tickets have been going up every year, and they still sold out. Sure, you may eventually price some people out, but the goal shouldn't be to price people out. The goal should be to try to eliminate scalpers. Because, now that the word is out that you can make money from scalping passes, people are going to be scalping, either professionally or just to finance their travels.
I think there is a better solution. Or, at least I hope there is. You can't get rid of scalping, but you can deter it or make it enough of a hassle that it becomes difficult to do and not worth people's while.
Internet went down last night and I wasn't aware of registration. Oh well, lesson learned for next year. Now to rearrange my flight and hotel for EscapistExpo!
I wasn't referring to people who live in the western states. I'm referring to people who live on the eastern side of the country who pass up PAX East because "Prime" is better.
Charging more is /an/ answer to help with the scalping. If the market price is around $200 on ebay, and it costs $195 for a 3-day pass, there's less profit to be made via scalping, and scalping will go down. It's not the /only/ answer, but pretending that raising the price means nothing is silly. It's not that they won't sell out, it's that the profit margin for scalpers will be far less and that portion of the population will go down.
There are other methods to help prevent scalping, but those methods won't curb super fast sellouts in any way since demand continues to rise at a very high rate.
Bottom line is, there's no solution that will cause everyone who wants a badge to be able to get one, with no scalpers, and a cheap price.
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I'm just not sure that Scalping is a significant enough problem that it's elimination would have a severe change on the sell out time. Let's presuppose that even 10% of the tickets were snatched up by scapers, if we use the 18k 3day pass number above, that's about 1800 tickets.
Not a small amount by any stretch of the imagination, but given ticket sales speeds, that's what? Another hour? Maybe? Less than a day certainly.
Furthermore, demand for PAX is up up up, (obviously) so the Scalpers prices may just go up accordingly (there are few purer markets from an econ perspective than scalping to look at Demand side economics.)
That being said, I've said before, I think the pricing structure needs to be reworked in several places (the 2day/3day Parity, overall cost, etc.) But my primiary logic for that stems from other factors than scalping. (which I won't get into here, except to say if the differential price between a 3day and 3 1days is pricing people out now, the increase may not have to be too huge to have an effect).
PAX is becoming more like a concert, you may get tickets or the sellout may happen pretty fast, at least I don't have to wait in line at the ticketmaster office! (Also as pointed out, this year may be the anomoloy precisely because of the server crashes earlier (which peaked intrest and primed all of us to be ready.)
IF someone truly has no way at all to buy passes, then that is unfortunate but it is hardly the fault of PAX, other attendees, or the way registration is handled. And as for the "attitude," I'd say there are way more posts with the opposite attitude of "I'm ENTITLED to go to PAX even though I didn't place enough importance on it, LOOKIT MEEEEEEE" than those with the ideas posted in my own.
PAX is popular. PAX is for gaming and internet nerds, who will lock this shit down when Registration opens. Because of both of these, if you want to attend PAX, you need to get your shit together well in advance and be prepared. If you don't want to do this, then you get what you get - and that might be nothing. I learned my lesson three years ago when I got one of the last BYOC passes (and almost didn't get one at all), and every year more people learn the same lesson.
[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
1) You can't just "make PAX bigger", because it's already pretty big and the lines for the most hyped games already measures in the hours. Last year, it was 3 hours for Skyrim and Old Republic on Saturday was so long that they told people after 10 am to not even bother getting into line because they wouldn't get to play. Unless the plan is to make PAX bigger and force game developers to expand their booth sizes by an equivalent multiple, that's a disaster waiting to happen ("Woohoo, I got into PAX! I'm gonna get to demo 3 games over 3 days!")
2) You can't move it somewhere else, because the only other facilities that are inherently larger are open air (Safeco Field and Seahawks Stadium). Our "retractable roof" stadium is more of a "retractable umbrella" stadium. Only stadium out there where the roof doesn't seal. Open air, city where it rains 8 months out of the year, electronics convention....what could possibly go wrong, right?
3) You can't implement some sort of "previous PAX'ers get first dibs" deal, because frankly, that's elitist and cliquish and most of us aren't in high school anymore. Why would one person get preferential treatment over another person simply because they had a previous opportunity to attend? We all hated those people when we were younger. Now we want to be those people?
4) Raising the price for all, frankly, a dumb idea. That's just creating a barrier by which other people who would normally be in the running to attend can no longer do so simply because they don't have the economic fluidity of someone else. And again, I'm saying this as someone who's undoubtedly one of the most affluent people attending. It's a selfish idea rooted in the belief that it's OK to step on somebody who didn't make it as far up the ladder as you did in order to reduce competition for something you want. Not only that, but what will it really solve? It will still sell out. Scalpers will just mark up the price of the tickets accordingly.
5) Though this may seem to contradict no. 4, I don't really get the people saying that 'now they can't go', unless those people are already local to Seattle. The event is still 4 months away. Using last year as a measure, the standard "upsell" rate of people who bought tickets for resale was double face value. So you will still be able to get a 3 day badge for $120-$130 at worst. If 60 dollars is the difference between you being able to travel to another state, get a hotel, set aside money for 4-5 days of meals and festivities, attend a 3 day event and not, then you need to re-evaluate your situation. The same people I see complaining that now they can't go are the same people I saw taking part in the pub crawls last year. At 6 dollars a drink, you're giving up 10 alcoholic beverages for the privilege of attending the event. Shuffle some money around and make it happen if it's important to you. Skip a pub crawl and you've covered the difference. Or, you know, DON'T STAY AT THE SHERATON, one of the most expensive hotels in the city. You can rent cars in Seattle for 10 dollars a day. Find a hotel in the suburbs and drive into town each day and save yourself $150 a night. This differs from 4 in that as it stands, everybody still has a CHANCE for a ticket direct from the site.
6) If you ARE local to Seattle and say now you can't go, how is it you live here and don't know a single person who works for Microsoft, Nintendo, Amazon, one of the game developers based out here, or any of the sponsors? ALL of these companies are given badges (or purchase them, I don't know for certain but I know they all have a pool of them), and a simple calling out of a favor to someone who works for one of these companies will typically result in you securing a badge.
7) The only solution that there really is that's fair to everybody, doesn't exclude anybody, and which should probably be implemented is announcing, in advance, a date and time tickets will go on sale, first-come, first-serve, and letting the chips fall where they may. It's how every concert or big ticket show is done, and just putting a link up on a Twitter feed saying "come and get em!" at random is an amateurish and lousy way of doing it.
I'm sure the PA peeps are well aware and concerned as the rest of you about the matter. I understand people being upset, but some people need a breather.
Let's not disgrace the name of nerdom by blowing up and throwing accusations.
Assuming you've done this with concerts or sporting events, you realize that this requires people to sit at their computer and push F5 repeatedly until they get access to the site? People here are already saying it isn't fair to people w/o computer access when the sale happens. The rush will be worse and more people would be even more angry.
I think most of the griping came from the fact that people on the West Coast were at work when the tickets went on sale, and the tickets were supposedly sold out by the time they got home. I don't know if this is true or not. I live in Seattle, and I picked up 20 3 day badges pretty late in the afternoon (no, I'm not reselling, I've just got my friends' backs), but it was well before, say, 6 pm. I also have the benefit of having a dedicated 10 gig circuit by which I'm the only person on it at any given time and a lab environment that I can set up to automatically keep pushing for a page until the other side opens up a session for me, so my ability to connect is greater than that of just about anybody else in the world.
I agree with those people that perhaps it wasn't fair to launch the ticket window at a time when they were all stuck at work and the rest of the country was already done with their day or getting close to it. A simple solution to that problem would be to start the ticket sales at, say, 7 pm PST on a given day.
Let's look at Blizzcon for a minute. They're charging $175 for a pass, and they had scalpers galore with passes that were going for $300+ a pop in 2010. The prices go up and the scalpers prices go up as well. Generally they try for 2-3x more than the ticket. The current ebay market price is partially dictated by the current actual cost of a pass.
Now, I'm not saying that there is a magical way to get everybody crammed into the WSCC. There isn't. And, super fast sell-outs are here to stay. BUT, there should be a way to deter scalpers so that the only thing we can QQ about is capacity and timing as opposed to "OMG, now I have to buy from a scalper."
The thing about scalping is that the asset they have (the badge) is time sensitive. The more time that passes, the less valuable their asset becomes. So by giving people hope that they will get a badge at face value at the event will reduce the demand for the scalper's product. Then, the scalpers are sitting on what is essentially a time bomb. If they don't sell the badge quickly, they have a worthless piece of plastic. This drives down prices. You saw it last year - leading up to the event, scalpers were asking $120-200 for a badge (depending if it had Halofest with it or not). By Friday afternoon of the convention, those prices had dropped to 75-100 dollars. By Saturday they were selling the badges for 50 bucks. On Sunday they were 25.
A scalper's best weapon is a long period of time where they have an asset, and those who don't have that asset don't have any hope of acquiring that asset through anyone but the scalper.