Guidebook notification... 2014 Pax Passes sold out???

Zookinator

Anyone else get a notification from Guidebook saying that the 2014 PAX Passes were sold out from the Every Two Minute booth? What is this about, and why would they even start selling 2014 PAX Passes? I am assuming these are the entry passes, if they are passes for something else that is inside PAX next year and not entry then I apologize in advance for my semi-rant.

Thanks :-D

Steel Fire

This is something to do with the Pepsi/Mt Dew stuff. Whatever it's about it has nothing to do with the normal selling of 2014 PAX Passes. Could be a typo in the Guidebook notice or it's something specific to the Mt. Dew stuff.

Kroenen

At the Every Two Minute booth, there are sets(two three-day passes) for PAX 2014 on sale for about 4500 points. They sold out during the morning and sent that out I guess.

timebeing

Yes you can use you Mountain Dew points to get a badge for next year. (4250 points) they have very few and they sell out very quickly each day.

Clix

I think that everybody with the Guidebook app had a slight moment of panic when the notification went out. It was kind of a dumb thing to share to the majority of attendees that weren't participating in the Dew/Doritos commercial.

Quintious

Unless you knew somebody who worked security and could get you in to scan the codes overnight before the queue room opened, you had no chance to get them, because they were gone by the time the doors were opened by that group of people.

My group was kind of annoyed by it, but it was lessened when we won a stack of the XBox One's at the auction last night instead, which we will sell to buy PAX badges (and other goodies).

sanovah

So what was this thing and why did they have passes? Skipped this year last minute due to a potential job and was a little angry/confused as to what this 2 minute thing was, why it was spamming my phone, and why there were 14' passes being "sold".

But yeah, does anyone even know how it worked, what it was, and why it had any passes for next year? Didn't hear about it until my phone started blowing up, but I'd at least like to have an idea of what our was and how it worked incase it happens again next year

trickycoolj

Doritos and Mountain Dew had QR codes all over PAX worth various points you could scan in guidebook. Each day there were a very limited amount of premium prizes you could "purchase" with the points. But we later heard there were only about 3 of said prizes. There were PAX 2014 passes, a Polk Soundbar kit, a fancy headset, a skateboard deck, shirts, hoodies, hats, sunglasses and Mountain Dew. They said these items would be available at noon but there was lots of confusion as to why things sold out long before noon. Then they admitted to only having 3 sound systems to begin with. The alternative was to spend points to get access to their auction party Sunday night. Inside there were 3 30 minute auctions where you could bid the remaining points you had on one of 10 Xbox Ones being auctioned in each block. But if you didn't have enough points you were easily out bid and either were stuck with t-shirts, hats and sunglasses or converting the PAX points to a lesser value of points in their upcoming promo that will be similar but you collect points on Mountain Dew and Doritos packages. It was lame and commandeered all the time of my friends who only wanted to hunt codes in the evening and do nothing else even if we had planned on visiting each free play area each night after dinner. (Yeah still annoyed about that.)

Edit: All of this was set up in the queue room after morning queue was over
So if you didn't venture in there you probably would have missed the whole commercial... Event.

sanovah

Damn that just seems like it was a whole big mess.

from an outsiders point fo view seems like they could have achieved the same goals if they just slapped a "sponsored by" logo on the badges and then at predetermined intervals generate a random number from 1-however many badges there were, announce that number through twitter and guidebook, then give the guy who brings the corresponding badge to X location his prize. Just seems like they added an extra annoying thing to an already busy convention. I know if i hadn't skipped for my interview I wouldn't have done any of that

Quintious

It wasn't messy, except the PAX badges.

The reality is, ANYBODY could have walked up to the Mountain Dew/Dorito's booth in the queue room between noon and 6 Friday or Saturday and walk off with a Polk Soundbar or a Turtle Beach headset. Both were widely available both days (the soundbars sold out at about 5 o clock on Saturday). However, the 2014 PAX badges were scammed by people who had security connections on the enforcers crew, and idiots moving or stealing the high point value Dew codes throughout the convention were rampant.

As I said, my group ended up with multiple XBox One's, but that was only because we Amazing Raced the hell out of the 10-scan 1000 point QR codes that were placed around on Sunday (and spent all day Friday legitimately finding most of the QR codes, unlike the people trying to game the system by making a Reddit thread with pictures of them or having a QR code cheat sheet someone stole from the Mountain Dew booth that they - the cheaters - were openly passing around in the Dew marketplace line on Sunday).

The concept of the contest was fine (it was actually kind of fun, if you're into scavenger hunts). The people who tried to game the game were not. A random drawing or raffle, as suggested above, would have been ridiculous, pretty lame, and would have garnered absolutely no interest in the promotion. What they needed to do was put the QR codes "under glass" so people wouldn't move/steal them, and design them in such a way that someone couldn't just take a photo of them and then have people scan the photos off their phones.

kabutodude

I thought the scavenger hunt for QR codes was a blast. The issue was people posting the codes online so EVERYONE had enough points, without even trying, to purchase the high value prizes. After that happened it was inevitable that everything decent would sell out very quickly.

Axon

Quintious wrote: »

Unless you knew somebody who worked security and could get you in to scan the codes overnight before the queue room opened, you had no chance to get them, because they were gone by the time the doors were opened by that group of people.

My group was kind of annoyed by it, but it was lessened when we won a stack of the XBox One's at the auction last night instead, which we will sell to buy PAX badges (and other goodies).

A stack of xbones?