Look, IMO there is no real way to make the system 'fairer' or to completely eliminate scalpers.
But to absolve the PAX organizers of all blame here is willfully ignorant. For example, after missing the 3-day pass I kept a watchful eye on twitter while trying to contact all our group members. They said right there on @official_pax that would tweet when 1k passes were left. That never happened, and as much as I love PAX that is a professional fail. If you're not going to do it, don't say you are, especially if the argument around here is that you should be depending on twitter for information dissemination.
It's doubly worse now that someone mentioned that there were qualitative indicators of supply for East. That means they could have used a similar system but failed to.
Again, I blame noone but myself for not having tickets. My group was unlucky but yes we could have done even more to ensure we got them. Then when 1-days were up I should have followed my naturally paranoid tendencies, ditched most of my group and bought the tickets I could afford.
But if you're going to stick with the current system, which is similar to most concerts and other big events, you HAVE TO ANNOUNCE THE TIME. You are not going to eliminate the scalpers with a random start time because exploiting these loopholes is their job. Their entire PURPOSE is to sit there and wait for the registration to start.
If they had announced the reg time, it would allow you time to make an informed decision. Could you take the day off to get your tickets? Or arrange with your friends? Besides, that's how every other major sports or music event does it other than the ones with lotteries.
Double the demand doesn't cut it as an excuse either. It's on the organizers to pick a vendor that can handle the traffic, and there have been plenty of non-gaming events that would have given them an idea of who could have handled it.
Also, why was there no indication of how many passes were sold during last week's reg? They must have known that the pass populations were lower than usual. Last year there were tweets about pass populations (yeah yeah this year isn't last year blah blah), and knowing you've already sold a certain percentage of the total supply should have given them a clue as to how fast these were going to sell out.
yeah, life is unfair. But I don't think constant vigilance should be a requirement to buy PAX badges. Heck, even a twitter message in the morning saying "registration may or may not open soon" would have helped lot of people, whether it was 2h or 24h later.
Again, I accept my responsibility for not getting badges. The system probably isn't going to get better. But I don't understand why there are so many people blindly defending the organizers when they clearly made some major mistakes. They have to take some responsiblity too.
Nobody cares, but I just want to say this was the first year a close personal friend of mine would have been able to go to PAX with me, but because they sold out so quickly now neither of us are going. Just wanted to tell someone, since I'm actually really sad about it.
On a non-whiny note, is the Washington State Convention Center the largest center in the area? No hope of further expansion then, I guess.
Nobody cares, but I just want to say this was the first year a close personal friend of mine would have been able to go to PAX with me, but because they sold out so quickly now neither of us are going. Just wanted to tell someone, since I'm actually really sad about it.
On a non-whiny note, is the Washington State Convention Center the largest center in the area? No hope of further expansion then, I guess.
sorry, dude, that sucks. I was going to bring my labmate and little brother this year. next year!!
Nobody cares, but I just want to say this was the first year a close personal friend of mine would have been able to go to PAX with me, but because they sold out so quickly now neither of us are going. Just wanted to tell someone, since I'm actually really sad about it.
On a non-whiny note, is the Washington State Convention Center the largest center in the area? No hope of further expansion then, I guess.
Absent other reforms, it has the same problem of a single announced date; the first batch just serves to let all the scalpers know that it's feedin' time.
Also, each batch will sell out successively faster, because I think people grossly underestimate the excess demand. This just means four days of heartbreak instead of one.
The scalpers would be fucked if the badges were made non-transferable.
At least with a day or two extra people stuck at work would have a second chance. It won't guarantee anything but at least it would be a bit more fair and reasonble than having just the one surprise sell day.
I dunno, it just seems silly to me a little bit to plan groups for pax right around when registration would open. My group of PAX goers, which I joined last year (This will be my second PAX) generally have the plans out in advance. With multiple members watching the site to send messages as soon as reg is open. And there is one major problem I could see with the "Give us an exact date and time" for when it opens, that means EVERYONE would be on the site trying to order, which would cause a lot of server problems on most places, as well as cause sellout to occur in minutes rather than hours, the best chance people have is with the random start times I'm afraid.
Guys...
Listen, guys...
I've got a
Guys, listen
I've got a plan
How about we
Guys,
How about we all jump into a gladiator arena and fight it out. Whoever wants a pass. You give us all a random weapon, like a broken bottle or a metal shovel, you give us almost lethal amounts of PCP and we all just go at it. The remaining 65,000 people left alive will get a pass and a lifetime of horrible memories and flashbacks. You want to bring your 11 year old? Give that bastard a rusty metal pipe and let him earn it. It's the only fair way of doing things.
Absent other reforms, it has the same problem of a single announced date; the first batch just serves to let all the scalpers know that it's feedin' time.
Also, each batch will sell out successively faster, because I think people grossly underestimate the excess demand. This just means four days of heartbreak instead of one.
The scalpers would be fucked if the badges were made non-transferable.
At least with a day or two extra people stuck at work would have a second chance. It won't guarantee anything but at least it would be a bit more fair and reasonble than having just the one surprise sell day.
Non-transferable might help, I think (though apparently at comicon that just results in scalpers picking up badges and reselling 'em a few minutes later.) I'd like to point out that the con I've been to with the best security, GDC, doesn't ever actually bother to confirm that the person who picked the badge up first is the person wearing it later. A lot of people "share" GDC badges, though I've never done it myself.
Announcing a date and time when tickets are going to go on sale far in advance has proven to be a nightmare for every con I've ever heard of that has done it. This year's SDCC had horrible issues because of the server load, and hundreds of people were stuck on loading screens for the entire time the tickets were on sale. I know one guy who had three different computers all using different ways to connect to the internet, and he couldn't get through on a single one of them. Badges were sold out before most of the people who wanted to buy them even saw the screen... people who clicked on the "purchase" link the second it hit their email box.
There were other problems as well, all exacerbated by the "everyone trying to buy tickets at exactly the same second after preparing to do so all day" thing.
Cultural Geek Girl on
Buttoneer, Brigadeer, and Keeper of the Book of Wil Wheaton.
Triwizard Drinking Tournament - '09 !Hufflepuff unofficial conscript, '10 !Gryffindor
Nerd blog at culturalgeekgirl.com
On a non-whiny note, is the Washington State Convention Center the largest center in the area? No hope of further expansion then, I guess.
If you want to stay in the Northwestern US, the WSCC is the place to go. Keep in mind PAX also occupies neighboring buildings and the Paramount Theater. (for those who don't know, the Paramount is Seattle's main concert hall. It's huge and so fancy I feel like I should be using opera glasses or something.)
Short of marching a hostile invasion on say... Portland, there's not much else PA can do to expand without leaving the west coast. Maybe they just need to have a Pax Central. And a PAX South / North. Or maybe we should just organize a hostile takeover of Portland and rename it "PAXcadia."
just throwing this out there...complaining doesn't really help. PAX is popular. If you really want to attend PAX, you need to be prepared to buy tickets at the drop of a hat; plane, hotel, badges. Every year I've gone, I always buy them within the first hour they are on sale for fear that something like this would happen and ruin the rest of my plans. You can't bank on something like this being available for X days, or even X hours.
PAX is popular, and you all should be glad that it has grown into what it is now.
Requiring positive ID and credit card used when you arrive is fine, but what if the tickets were bought as a gift? The person and CC used won't be there. How would that be handled? Attach names to the tickets if they're bought for someone else? Why can't we just attach names of the people going when we buy them now?
As someone who has dealt with SDCC registration for a few years, I find no problem with associating a name with each ticket when it's bought (or even within 24-48 hours). That would eliminate scalpers on eBay. Hell, I saw a 3 Day pass with a $300 BIN. Utterly ridiculous. You can't possibly tell me these people decided in a week (or less) that they couldn't go. Their intention was to buy as many as possible and rake in the profits. It hurts us as attendees when we can't get tickets unless we spend $200-$300 for each person or risk buying some counterfeit badge either online or from some random street guy.
Put a name on it and the 3rd party price gouging nearly disappears and counterfeiting will reduce dramatically. Do an eBay search for San Diego Comicon (or SDCC) 2012 tickets = 0 results. Even if the person, or people, with their name(s) on the ticket(s) showed up at the con, picked up their ticket(s) and then tried to sell them...who goes through the trouble of flying to a city, buying a hotel room, taking time off work and they don't even have tickets to the con? Set up some minor security (off duty cops are good) to prevent 3rd party selling. If PAX makes it an agreement as part of the purchase that you can't resell it without going through PAX, street selling would be almost gone as PAX security could confiscate the tickets.
PAX would just have to decide if they would accept returns on tickets since they would be non-transferable. If they did take them back, they can relist them online through an official PAX eBay account or through their original registration site for those who might still be looking for tickets. BTW, this is the same thing SDCC does when people return their tickets.
No system will be without some flaws, but reduce or remove the 3rd party scalping problem and there would be more tickets for us, the legitimate buyers.
They said right there on @official_pax that would tweet when 1k passes were left. That never happened, and as much as I love PAX that is a professional fail. If you're not going to do it, don't say you are, especially if the argument around here is that you should be depending on twitter for information dissemination.
It's doubly worse now that someone mentioned that there were qualitative indicators of supply for East. That means they could have used a similar system but failed to.
I think they probably planned to, but by the time they noticed there were only 1k left it was too late. Pretty sure the speed of sales took the organizers totally by surprise. Maybe it shouldn't have, but I'd guess that the time between 1000 left and 0 left was very short (and would have been even shorter with an announcement).
The qualitative indicators for east didn't come out until after the website redesign, which was well after 3-day badges sold out. Also, East didn't sell out on anywhere near the same timetable as Prime. The same system, while nice, isn't exactly apples to apples for this situation.
Requiring positive ID and credit card used when you arrive is fine, but what if the tickets were bought as a gift? The person and CC used won't be there. How would that be handled? Attach names to the tickets if they're bought for someone else? Why can't we just attach names of the people going when we buy them now?
As someone who has dealt with SDCC registration for a few years, I find no problem with associating a name with each ticket when it's bought (or even within 24-48 hours). That would eliminate scalpers on eBay. Hell, I saw a 3 Day pass with a $300 BIN. Utterly ridiculous. You can't possibly tell me these people decided in a week (or less) that they couldn't go. Their intention was to buy as many as possible and rake in the profits. It hurts us as attendees when we can't get tickets unless we spend $200-$300 for each person or risk buying some counterfeit badge either online or from some random street guy.
Put a name on it and the 3rd party price gouging nearly disappears and counterfeiting will reduce dramatically. Do an eBay search for San Diego Comicon (or SDCC) 2012 tickets = 0 results. Even if the person, or people, with their name(s) on the ticket(s) showed up at the con, picked up their ticket(s) and then tried to sell them...who goes through the trouble of flying to a city, buying a hotel room, taking time off work and they don't even have tickets to the con? Set up some minor security (off duty cops are good) to prevent 3rd party selling. If PAX makes it an agreement as part of the purchase that you can't resell it without going through PAX, street selling would be almost gone as PAX security could confiscate the tickets.
PAX would just have to decide if they would accept returns on tickets since they would be non-transferable. If they did take them back, they can relist them online through an official PAX eBay account or through their original registration site for those who might still be looking for tickets. BTW, this is the same thing SDCC does when people return their tickets.
No system will be without some flaws, but reduce or remove the 3rd party scalping problem and there would be more tickets for us, the legitimate buyers.
Just my 2 cents.
ALL OF THIS^
names on badges
refundable up til about a month or two before the event to guarantee shipping
put refunded tickets back into the system..if on ebay maybe a $5 "restocking" fee added on for the return trouble
even if one ticket is saved from a scalper that's one more ticket for a true pax attendee
Requiring positive ID and credit card used when you arrive is fine, but what if the tickets were bought as a gift? The person and CC used won't be there. How would that be handled? Attach names to the tickets if they're bought for someone else? Why can't we just attach names of the people going when we buy them now?
As someone who has dealt with SDCC registration for a few years, I find no problem with associating a name with each ticket when it's bought (or even within 24-48 hours). That would eliminate scalpers on eBay. Hell, I saw a 3 Day pass with a $300 BIN. Utterly ridiculous. You can't possibly tell me these people decided in a week (or less) that they couldn't go. Their intention was to buy as many as possible and rake in the profits. It hurts us as attendees when we can't get tickets unless we spend $200-$300 for each person or risk buying some counterfeit badge either online or from some random street guy.
Put a name on it and the 3rd party price gouging nearly disappears and counterfeiting will reduce dramatically. Do an eBay search for San Diego Comicon (or SDCC) 2012 tickets = 0 results. Even if the person, or people, with their name(s) on the ticket(s) showed up at the con, picked up their ticket(s) and then tried to sell them...who goes through the trouble of flying to a city, buying a hotel room, taking time off work and they don't even have tickets to the con? Set up some minor security (off duty cops are good) to prevent 3rd party selling. If PAX makes it an agreement as part of the purchase that you can't resell it without going through PAX, street selling would be almost gone as PAX security could confiscate the tickets.
PAX would just have to decide if they would accept returns on tickets since they would be non-transferable. If they did take them back, they can relist them online through an official PAX eBay account or through their original registration site for those who might still be looking for tickets. BTW, this is the same thing SDCC does when people return their tickets.
No system will be without some flaws, but reduce or remove the 3rd party scalping problem and there would be more tickets for us, the legitimate buyers.
Just my 2 cents.
ALL OF THIS^
names on badges
refundable up til about a month or two before the event to guarantee shipping
put refunded tickets back into the system..if on ebay maybe a $5 "restocking" fee added on for the return trouble
even if one ticket is saved from a scalper that's one more ticket for a true pax attendee
You say this like as if all the tickets were bought up by scalpers. It's been beaten into the ground that they weren't.
ALL OF THIS^
names on badges
refundable up til about a month or two before the event to guarantee shipping
put refunded tickets back into the system..if on ebay maybe a $5 "restocking" fee added on for the return trouble
even if one ticket is saved from a scalper that's one more ticket for a true pax attendee
You say this like as if all the tickets were bought up by scalpers. It's been beaten into the ground that they weren't.
Not sure where you read that in my comment but I'll try to be clearer. There are scalpers, I'm not claiming they bought everything but they did buy some. Placing names on badges would help with that but the consensus is that if you put names on badges and suddenly you can't go you can't even sell them to someone else at face value but if they are refundable at least you can get your money back and another pax goer has a shot. I feel it would be a modest estimate to say we lost 50 tickets to scalpers...I'm not claiming thousands but for those 50 people who were actually trying to go? It's pretty sad.
Well shit, I am beyond bummed. I skipped East this year to finally make the trip to Seattle and had been watching since the beginning of April for passes to go on sale. But since I wasn't glued to the page my group is going to miss out on both. I guess East will be the same way and I'll just never get to go to PAX again.
I feel it would be a modest estimate to say we lost 50 tickets to scalpers...I'm not claiming thousands but for those 50 people who were actually trying to go?
This attitude is ridiculous. 50 people? You would really want to make fundamental changes to how the whole event is ticketed to avoid 50 scalped tickets? Out of tens of thousands?
Especially considering that those 50 tickets will eventually end up in the hands of people who are "actually trying to go" anyway? Silly goosery of the highest order.
You're willing to create hassles and headaches for hundreds and hundreds of other fans because of as few as 50 scalped tickets? I mean, I asked earlier if we even have any numbers to suggest what percentage of tickets wind up scalped*, but apparently for some the number wouldn't even matter. We've already had one suggest that one scalped ticket was enough to justify any upheaval. You're saying fifty. Both of you need some perspective.
* - I'd be even more interested how many are originally purchased by scalpers, as opposed to those resold by fans who legitimately wanted to go but were unable to.
mcdermott on
0
Options
Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
ALL OF THIS^
names on badges
refundable up til about a month or two before the event to guarantee shipping
put refunded tickets back into the system..if on ebay maybe a $5 "restocking" fee added on for the return trouble
even if one ticket is saved from a scalper that's one more ticket for a true pax attendee
You say this like as if all the tickets were bought up by scalpers. It's been beaten into the ground that they weren't.
Not sure where you read that in my comment but I'll try to be clearer. There are scalpers, I'm not claiming they bought everything but they did buy some. Placing names on badges would help with that but the consensus is that if you put names on badges and suddenly you can't go you can't even sell them to someone else at face value but if they are refundable at least you can get your money back and another pax goer has a shot. I feel it would be a modest estimate to say we lost 50 tickets to scalpers...I'm not claiming thousands but for those 50 people who were actually trying to go? It's pretty sad.
When you use Penny Arcade on a regular basis, do you go to the PAX website? Like, at all? I sure don't. The only time I go there is to get at the registration link; mainly because there is nothing new posted there for 99.9% of the year. Once visited, it is no longer informational nor useful for half a year, if even that. It needs to be rolled into the front page or the front page itself needs to become a true front page for everything Penny Arcade and move the comic to it's own tab.
Every Day from when east ends yeah. Kinda how i got tickets this year...
Besides, I doubt anybody is considering that making them non-transferable, even with an official resale method, is going to lead to more unused badges (or portions of badges). I've let people use a day or a half-day of my 3-day before. Assuming your 50-scalper number, I'll go ahead and say straight-up that you will see at least 50 more badges go unused for various reasons if you make them non-transferable. You're just shuffling misery around, not eliminating it.
Most suggests are basically "I want to make it harder for somebody else to get a badge, so it is easier for me to get one." Because this is a zero-sum game. Either because you failed to get one this year, or are afraid you will fail to get one next year. Because anything you do to put a badge into your own hands is taking it out of somebody else's. Even if that somebody else is just somebody who lacked the sweat or luck to get a badge at registration time, and is instead is depending on cash to get one through the secondary market. They're no less a fan than you. You want to take the badge out of another fan's hands.
When you use Penny Arcade on a regular basis, do you go to the PAX website? Like, at all? I sure don't. The only time I go there is to get at the registration link; mainly because there is nothing new posted there for 99.9% of the year. Once visited, it is no longer informational nor useful for half a year, if even that. It needs to be rolled into the front page or the front page itself needs to become a true front page for everything Penny Arcade and move the comic to it's own tab.
Every Day from when east ends yeah. Kinda how i got tickets this year...
ding ding ding
I said it before: they throw an entire convention with tens of thousands of attendees for the sole purpose of announcing that Prime badge registration is imminent. That's your cue to start checking the page, sign up for the twitter, consult your guildies, make plans on how you're getting your badge.
My only annoyance is that as fast as I'm aware there was no indication on the main penny arcade website that they would be announcing when tickets would be available through the twitter account. Stuff sells out yes, but not even being aware that they were on sale until after the sell out is annoying.
Besides, I doubt anybody is considering that making them non-transferable, even with an official resale method, is going to lead to more unused badges (or portions of badges). I've let people use a day or a half-day of my 3-day before. Assuming your 50-scalper number, I'll go ahead and say straight-up that you will see at least 50 more badges go unused for various reasons if you make them non-transferable. You're just shuffling misery around, not eliminating it.
Most suggests are basically "I want to make it harder for somebody else to get a badge, so it is easier for me to get one." Because this is a zero-sum game. Either because you failed to get one this year, or are afraid you will fail to get one next year. Because anything you do to put a badge into your own hands is taking it out of somebody else's. Even if that somebody else is just somebody who lacked the sweat or luck to get a badge at registration time, and is instead is depending on cash to get one through the secondary market. They're no less a fan than you. You want to take the badge out of another fan's hands.
^This. Plus if I want to buy 5 passes because I know I have 15 people I'm going to try to get to go to PAX with me this year, how exactly is this a bad thing? I know a few people in this boat. They've got the first 5 bestest friends they know they're going to ask, but they also know they've got 10 people in the wings who would gladly come along if a pass were available. AFAIK, they've never had any passes left and never sold a pass to someone they weren't personally acquainted with (and never over face value.) You make the passes entirely nontransferable and this no longer becomes an option.
Heck, part of the fun of PAX for me is putting together the group I'm going to go with. In April/May it's never 100% fleshed out. Things change. Non-transferrable passes would fundamentally alter this to potentially save some unknown (but likely small) number of passes from being scalped? (And doesn't even accomplish this goal!)
Am I say the current system is perfect? NO, not by any stretch of the imagination. But there are certainly less intrusive measures to take. (For example, mandatory will call would likely have basically the same effect if you stop and really think about how a nontransferrable badge is going to work in practice but with signficantly less downsides over all from the buyer's prespective.)
I love how people keep coming in, ignoring the previous 20+ pages of discussion, and bring up the same points. Too bad we can't put some sort of sticky post on the top of every page that states "Yes, tickets sold out ridiculously fast. Yes, Twitter is how we announce tickets are on sale. No, we're not moving PAX out of the WSCC. No, we're not raising ticket prices yet. No, we're not putting names/IDs with badges yet. Yes, we will improve for next year." just to avoid some of the redundancy, haha.
I am also amused at the number of people who claim "they desperately wanted tickets" and were "checking the site every day" yet are just now finding out, on Friday, that the tickets sold out on Tuesday.
Look, everyone who got tickets sympathizes with those who did not - none of us are happy at your misfortune or disappointment. But there's nothing we can do, and really it all boils down to your own choices whether voluntary (not subscribing to twitter) or semi-involuntary (having to work with no internet/phone access). Pitching fits and rehashing the same arguments every three pages isn't productive for anyone, let alone yourself.
Posts
But to absolve the PAX organizers of all blame here is willfully ignorant. For example, after missing the 3-day pass I kept a watchful eye on twitter while trying to contact all our group members. They said right there on @official_pax that would tweet when 1k passes were left. That never happened, and as much as I love PAX that is a professional fail. If you're not going to do it, don't say you are, especially if the argument around here is that you should be depending on twitter for information dissemination.
It's doubly worse now that someone mentioned that there were qualitative indicators of supply for East. That means they could have used a similar system but failed to.
Again, I blame noone but myself for not having tickets. My group was unlucky but yes we could have done even more to ensure we got them. Then when 1-days were up I should have followed my naturally paranoid tendencies, ditched most of my group and bought the tickets I could afford.
But if you're going to stick with the current system, which is similar to most concerts and other big events, you HAVE TO ANNOUNCE THE TIME. You are not going to eliminate the scalpers with a random start time because exploiting these loopholes is their job. Their entire PURPOSE is to sit there and wait for the registration to start.
If they had announced the reg time, it would allow you time to make an informed decision. Could you take the day off to get your tickets? Or arrange with your friends? Besides, that's how every other major sports or music event does it other than the ones with lotteries.
Double the demand doesn't cut it as an excuse either. It's on the organizers to pick a vendor that can handle the traffic, and there have been plenty of non-gaming events that would have given them an idea of who could have handled it.
Also, why was there no indication of how many passes were sold during last week's reg? They must have known that the pass populations were lower than usual. Last year there were tweets about pass populations (yeah yeah this year isn't last year blah blah), and knowing you've already sold a certain percentage of the total supply should have given them a clue as to how fast these were going to sell out.
yeah, life is unfair. But I don't think constant vigilance should be a requirement to buy PAX badges. Heck, even a twitter message in the morning saying "registration may or may not open soon" would have helped lot of people, whether it was 2h or 24h later.
Again, I accept my responsibility for not getting badges. The system probably isn't going to get better. But I don't understand why there are so many people blindly defending the organizers when they clearly made some major mistakes. They have to take some responsiblity too.
On a non-whiny note, is the Washington State Convention Center the largest center in the area? No hope of further expansion then, I guess.
sorry, dude, that sucks. I was going to bring my labmate and little brother this year. next year!!
doubly unfortunate since passes can no longer be sold at face value here on the forums.
The scalpers would be fucked if the badges were made non-transferable.
At least with a day or two extra people stuck at work would have a second chance. It won't guarantee anything but at least it would be a bit more fair and reasonble than having just the one surprise sell day.
Listen, guys...
I've got a
Guys, listen
I've got a plan
How about we
Guys,
How about we all jump into a gladiator arena and fight it out. Whoever wants a pass. You give us all a random weapon, like a broken bottle or a metal shovel, you give us almost lethal amounts of PCP and we all just go at it. The remaining 65,000 people left alive will get a pass and a lifetime of horrible memories and flashbacks. You want to bring your 11 year old? Give that bastard a rusty metal pipe and let him earn it. It's the only fair way of doing things.
Electronic composer for hire.
Non-transferable might help, I think (though apparently at comicon that just results in scalpers picking up badges and reselling 'em a few minutes later.) I'd like to point out that the con I've been to with the best security, GDC, doesn't ever actually bother to confirm that the person who picked the badge up first is the person wearing it later. A lot of people "share" GDC badges, though I've never done it myself.
Announcing a date and time when tickets are going to go on sale far in advance has proven to be a nightmare for every con I've ever heard of that has done it. This year's SDCC had horrible issues because of the server load, and hundreds of people were stuck on loading screens for the entire time the tickets were on sale. I know one guy who had three different computers all using different ways to connect to the internet, and he couldn't get through on a single one of them. Badges were sold out before most of the people who wanted to buy them even saw the screen... people who clicked on the "purchase" link the second it hit their email box.
There were other problems as well, all exacerbated by the "everyone trying to buy tickets at exactly the same second after preparing to do so all day" thing.
Triwizard Drinking Tournament - '09 !Hufflepuff unofficial conscript, '10 !Gryffindor
Nerd blog at culturalgeekgirl.com
If you want to stay in the Northwestern US, the WSCC is the place to go. Keep in mind PAX also occupies neighboring buildings and the Paramount Theater. (for those who don't know, the Paramount is Seattle's main concert hall. It's huge and so fancy I feel like I should be using opera glasses or something.)
Short of marching a hostile invasion on say... Portland, there's not much else PA can do to expand without leaving the west coast. Maybe they just need to have a Pax Central. And a PAX South / North. Or maybe we should just organize a hostile takeover of Portland and rename it "PAXcadia."
PAX is popular, and you all should be glad that it has grown into what it is now.
As someone who has dealt with SDCC registration for a few years, I find no problem with associating a name with each ticket when it's bought (or even within 24-48 hours). That would eliminate scalpers on eBay. Hell, I saw a 3 Day pass with a $300 BIN. Utterly ridiculous. You can't possibly tell me these people decided in a week (or less) that they couldn't go. Their intention was to buy as many as possible and rake in the profits. It hurts us as attendees when we can't get tickets unless we spend $200-$300 for each person or risk buying some counterfeit badge either online or from some random street guy.
Put a name on it and the 3rd party price gouging nearly disappears and counterfeiting will reduce dramatically. Do an eBay search for San Diego Comicon (or SDCC) 2012 tickets = 0 results. Even if the person, or people, with their name(s) on the ticket(s) showed up at the con, picked up their ticket(s) and then tried to sell them...who goes through the trouble of flying to a city, buying a hotel room, taking time off work and they don't even have tickets to the con? Set up some minor security (off duty cops are good) to prevent 3rd party selling. If PAX makes it an agreement as part of the purchase that you can't resell it without going through PAX, street selling would be almost gone as PAX security could confiscate the tickets.
PAX would just have to decide if they would accept returns on tickets since they would be non-transferable. If they did take them back, they can relist them online through an official PAX eBay account or through their original registration site for those who might still be looking for tickets. BTW, this is the same thing SDCC does when people return their tickets.
No system will be without some flaws, but reduce or remove the 3rd party scalping problem and there would be more tickets for us, the legitimate buyers.
Just my 2 cents.
I think they probably planned to, but by the time they noticed there were only 1k left it was too late. Pretty sure the speed of sales took the organizers totally by surprise. Maybe it shouldn't have, but I'd guess that the time between 1000 left and 0 left was very short (and would have been even shorter with an announcement).
The qualitative indicators for east didn't come out until after the website redesign, which was well after 3-day badges sold out. Also, East didn't sell out on anywhere near the same timetable as Prime. The same system, while nice, isn't exactly apples to apples for this situation.
ALL OF THIS^
names on badges
refundable up til about a month or two before the event to guarantee shipping
put refunded tickets back into the system..if on ebay maybe a $5 "restocking" fee added on for the return trouble
even if one ticket is saved from a scalper that's one more ticket for a true pax attendee
[X] Train tix
[_] Finish Vivi costume
[X] Anxiously wait
You say this like as if all the tickets were bought up by scalpers. It's been beaten into the ground that they weren't.
names on badges
refundable up til about a month or two before the event to guarantee shipping
put refunded tickets back into the system..if on ebay maybe a $5 "restocking" fee added on for the return trouble
even if one ticket is saved from a scalper that's one more ticket for a true pax attendee
Not sure where you read that in my comment but I'll try to be clearer. There are scalpers, I'm not claiming they bought everything but they did buy some. Placing names on badges would help with that but the consensus is that if you put names on badges and suddenly you can't go you can't even sell them to someone else at face value but if they are refundable at least you can get your money back and another pax goer has a shot. I feel it would be a modest estimate to say we lost 50 tickets to scalpers...I'm not claiming thousands but for those 50 people who were actually trying to go? It's pretty sad.
[X] Train tix
[_] Finish Vivi costume
[X] Anxiously wait
This attitude is ridiculous. 50 people? You would really want to make fundamental changes to how the whole event is ticketed to avoid 50 scalped tickets? Out of tens of thousands?
Especially considering that those 50 tickets will eventually end up in the hands of people who are "actually trying to go" anyway? Silly goosery of the highest order.
You're willing to create hassles and headaches for hundreds and hundreds of other fans because of as few as 50 scalped tickets? I mean, I asked earlier if we even have any numbers to suggest what percentage of tickets wind up scalped*, but apparently for some the number wouldn't even matter. We've already had one suggest that one scalped ticket was enough to justify any upheaval. You're saying fifty. Both of you need some perspective.
* - I'd be even more interested how many are originally purchased by scalpers, as opposed to those resold by fans who legitimately wanted to go but were unable to.
This is mildly disappointing.
For fifty people.
In the entire world.
Satans..... hints.....
Most suggests are basically "I want to make it harder for somebody else to get a badge, so it is easier for me to get one." Because this is a zero-sum game. Either because you failed to get one this year, or are afraid you will fail to get one next year. Because anything you do to put a badge into your own hands is taking it out of somebody else's. Even if that somebody else is just somebody who lacked the sweat or luck to get a badge at registration time, and is instead is depending on cash to get one through the secondary market. They're no less a fan than you. You want to take the badge out of another fan's hands.
ding ding ding
I said it before: they throw an entire convention with tens of thousands of attendees for the sole purpose of announcing that Prime badge registration is imminent. That's your cue to start checking the page, sign up for the twitter, consult your guildies, make plans on how you're getting your badge.
Cause this is how PAX does it?
If you want instant notification about passes use twitter. Its as simple as that.
^This. Plus if I want to buy 5 passes because I know I have 15 people I'm going to try to get to go to PAX with me this year, how exactly is this a bad thing? I know a few people in this boat. They've got the first 5 bestest friends they know they're going to ask, but they also know they've got 10 people in the wings who would gladly come along if a pass were available. AFAIK, they've never had any passes left and never sold a pass to someone they weren't personally acquainted with (and never over face value.) You make the passes entirely nontransferable and this no longer becomes an option.
Heck, part of the fun of PAX for me is putting together the group I'm going to go with. In April/May it's never 100% fleshed out. Things change. Non-transferrable passes would fundamentally alter this to potentially save some unknown (but likely small) number of passes from being scalped? (And doesn't even accomplish this goal!)
Am I say the current system is perfect? NO, not by any stretch of the imagination. But there are certainly less intrusive measures to take. (For example, mandatory will call would likely have basically the same effect if you stop and really think about how a nontransferrable badge is going to work in practice but with signficantly less downsides over all from the buyer's prespective.)
A jousting tournament.
<@zerzhul> you win at twdt
I am also amused at the number of people who claim "they desperately wanted tickets" and were "checking the site every day" yet are just now finding out, on Friday, that the tickets sold out on Tuesday.
Look, everyone who got tickets sympathizes with those who did not - none of us are happy at your misfortune or disappointment. But there's nothing we can do, and really it all boils down to your own choices whether voluntary (not subscribing to twitter) or semi-involuntary (having to work with no internet/phone access). Pitching fits and rehashing the same arguments every three pages isn't productive for anyone, let alone yourself.
PAX Prime Attendee since 2006, BYOC Attendee 2008-2012, Buttoneer 2010-2014
https://www.pinnypals.com/pals/alegria
There will be a post-pax suggestions thread where you can post your intelligent and well thought out suggestions for the next pax.
If you want to have a debate on registration methods for large conventions, there's a debate and discourse subforum.