ClixThis guy I knowSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I don't know what specific lanyard you're talking about, but I always arrive with my own lanyard. The generic Bohemoth lanyards they hand out at PAX are pretty boring. But there are also tons of exhibitors that give away their own lanyards as free swag.
The standard PAX Lanyard will hold your badges but is prone to dropping your pass (this may just be a personal experience but i had one fall out before) . I'd get a reliable lanyard that isn't a clip. If you can't purchase one though, there are some great lanyards that are given away through PAX.
Trandescent on
PAX East 2018 4-Day Pass [X] BYOC Pass [X] Hotel Reservation [X]
See y'all at PAX East 2018!
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jaxjaggywiresSneaking up behind youRegistered Userregular
At East this year, I used the lanyard that came with the core pin set...seemed to work and let me display the pins I picked up.
Hopefully this is the right thread to ask this. I've been going to East since 2010 at the Hynes convention center and lurking on the board since then and finally decided to join the forums this year.
In a past year I saw a discussion where someone talked about a cool lanyard that maybe was chainmail or something similar. Anyone heard of these or maybe recommend something cool like that? I'm open to suggestions and would like to find something different than the normal lanyard that you get for free in the queue room. I searched on the forums and couldn't find the thread. I found some interesting options searching with Google, but was hoping for some suggestions that people might already own and could recommend.
If you are worried about your lanyard dropping your badge thread the lanyard through the hole on the badge. This is much more secure than using the little clip at the end of the lanyard.
As an update, this was posted on the official pax website. This may or may not answer anyone's specific questions, but it's an insight into the thought processes that went on for this year's release. While I'm posting this here, this is not necessarily the best place to respond in any sort of "direct to PA" capactiy. If you want to address PA/Reed directly, I would suggest tweeting at http://twitter.com/official_pax or emailing pax_questions@paxsite.com referencing this website post. http://east.paxsite.com/news/the-pax-east-registration-faq
The PAX East Registration FAQ
We’ve heard a lot of frustration from our audience regarding the challenges in getting a PAX East badge this year, and while there’s not much we can do to ease that frustration, we did want to try and publicly answer some questions we’ve seen.
Why don’t you print more badges?
There is only so much physical space we have for the show, so firecode and safety regulations dictate how many badges we are allowed to distribute. The BCEC is a very large venue, but it’s not large enough to fill the entirety of the demand.
Why don’t you do a lottery system? Why not do a pre-pre-reg system? Why not do system X?
The fundamental problem is supply vs. demand. No matter what system we use, any change would take badges away from one person and give them to another…we don’t see that as a solution to the problem.
Why did you give advance notice? The massive crush to get tickets was crazy.
A: Over the years we’ve experimented with a number of distribution methods, and whether we give advance notice or not (we have done both), the fundamental problem still exists - there are more people that want to come to PAX than we can fit into PAX.
But I was there right at noon and I still didn’t get tickets…where did they all go?
A: Even if you refreshed at noon on the dime, so did 50,000 other people… so even if you got there 30 seconds after noon, there was a chance that you were placed in the queue as #40000+, so effectively there were still tens of thousands of people “ahead” of you to purchase 3-day passes.
How is it that you let scalpers buy every/all of the/most of the badges?
Most people point to ebay or craigslist and say “Look at this, this is ridiculous.” A couple of things:
The number of badges you see from now until PAX for resale is still a very small percentage of the total badges we sold. Even if you see hundreds and hundreds of them, it’s still less than .05% of what’s out there.
We poured over the data this year and although it was higher than the 2.2 tickets per transaction we had at Prime, it was still only 2.9 tickets per transaction this year for East. Historically, East transaction size has been higher than Prime though, and nothing in the transaction log is indicative of anyone gaming the system or taking exorbitant amounts of tickets.
Keep in mind that those selling badges on those services do not currently have their badges in hand, and if we find they violated our badge maximums, there’s a good chance those orders will get cancelled and they will NEVER get badges. Any badge orders that get cancelled will be gradually introduced to the ticketing system over the next several months.
Also keep in mind that unlike Washington, Massachusetts maintains anti-scalping laws, and we will absolutely be leveraging those whenever possible.
zerzhul on
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jaxjaggywiresSneaking up behind youRegistered Userregular
It's pretty crazy to think how close I was to not even getting a three day pass. I clicked the link posted on twitter like 1 minute after it was posted.
PAX East 2015:
3 Single Day Passes [x]
Hotel [x]
Flights [x]
Packed []
Excitement[x]
———————————— PAX East 12' PAX East 13' PAX East 14'
PAX East 15'
No, I think that the message they are sending is that they are always trying to make it better, but some things work and others do not. The one simple reality is that the demand is outstripping the supply and there is no easy or obvious solution for that. If the BCEC expands there may be room to grow the convention but so may the demand. I really think it is unfair to say they don't care about fixing the problems - it may be that problems themselves are not readily solvable given the constraints of the venue and consumer demand for tickets.
aBByNormaL on
PAX East 2016 .... gots my Passes [x] Hotel [x] Flights [x] Packed [..] .... ok we're all good !!!!!
As far as the technical issues go, I think everyone involved could see the issues, and that's a little more straightforward. Nobody was satisfied with websites breaking.
No, I think that the message they are sending is that they are always trying to make it better, but some things work and others do not. The one simple reality is that the demand is outstripping the supply and there is no easy or obvious solution for that. If the BCEC expands there may be room to grow the convention but so may the demand. I really think it is unfair to say they don't care about fixing the problems - it may be that problems themselves are not readily solvable given the constraints of the venue and consumer demand for tickets.
Right, and because it's not completely solvable, they don't care to try anything new, because even if it might be better, it won't be perfect.
No, I think that the message they are sending is that they are always trying to make it better, but some things work and others do not. The one simple reality is that the demand is outstripping the supply and there is no easy or obvious solution for that. If the BCEC expands there may be room to grow the convention but so may the demand. I really think it is unfair to say they don't care about fixing the problems - it may be that problems themselves are not readily solvable given the constraints of the venue and consumer demand for tickets.
Right, and because it's not completely solvable, they don't care to try anything new, because even if it might be better, it won't be perfect.
but they did try something new this year...They announced it ahead of time and used that new queue system. both those things were not done last year.
PAX East 2015:
3 Single Day Passes [x]
Hotel [x]
Flights [x]
Packed []
Excitement[x]
———————————— PAX East 12' PAX East 13' PAX East 14'
PAX East 15'
The announcing ahead of time wasn't new, just not the same as East last year. The queue system was new (at least to East, I feel like I remember friends who went to prime saying it was there for that as well), but that was more of an improvement to help their infrastructure, not help make things more organized and/or fair to the end users (aka: us).
Better is super relative. Defining an objective "better" is not something any of us are qualified to do. Other than maybe having websites not crash
Well, yes, having websites not crash is a good thing (which was failed this time, so that wasn't achieved). As for defining "better," that's quite simple. Getting badges is a game. There need to be defined rules on how to win that "game." If people are not given defined rules which are followed, or they're given rules just to find out they're not really rules, people get angry.
Rules:
"If you do X, you will get tickets."
"If you show up to <place>/<time>, you will see the link to get tickets."
"If you go to this site at this time, you will get a hotel room."
"If X breaks, Y is the backup plan, so look there."
None of those were either stated or followed and I don't see anything to tell me that those are going to happen. So, the system won't really improve.
It's pretty crazy to think how close I was to not even getting a three day pass. I clicked the link posted on twitter like 1 minute after it was posted.
I cut it pretty close myself. I had the queue on my phone and pc, it loaded on my phone and bought my pass. A minute later it loaded on my pc and they were gone.
Not that the official PAX East website incorrectly said that passes were 'Coming Soon' up until the point they were sold out. Or the back door ways were the only way to get passes. Or that the pricing encourages people who are only going two days to buy 3 day passes. Or that by announcing 'its tomorrow' basically screws people who have been checking every day for months.
Silly me. It's all comes down to an unsolvable economics problem.
As far as the technical issues go, I think everyone involved could see the issues, and that's a little more straightforward. Nobody was satisfied with websites breaking.
Well the people who got their tickets at the expense of people hammering the un-updated websites probably are happy. Supply and demand, not anyone being screwed.
Also, where in this post do you see the PA people taking the technical issues (although I contend they aren't only technical, but also in planning and philosophy) seriously?
To the people who have SUCH a huge problem with the way that they run the ticketing...I say this(and mostly because I'm annoyed that so many people have nothing but bad things to say):
1. Yes those of us who saw the link on Twitter may have gotten there first, but that was because they tried something NEW by announcing it...and yes...that was new. Their site being refreshed that hard was an unwanted result, which is why they did the best they could to put it up to the other place where they post official links. Should it have been on Kiko's before Official PAX; no. But it was a quick "what can we do to actually get people passes" judgement call.
2. They are not saying they don't care. They are saying they are trying different things to try to find the optimal way to release hotels and passes. As they and others have said...it is overall a supply vs demand issue. The issue with the "Coming Soon" still being up past the point when the 3 day passes were able to be purchased WAS a demand issue. There was so much demand that it crashed their site. And they normally don't have that first rush of demand on the site I doubt because they normally don't tell people in advance when tickets will be released.
3. You can't find the correct way to do things without trying new things. Excluding PAX AUS they have two shots at this a year. Demand has only risen each year. They are still trying to catch up with that demand but every time they try the demand is 5X greater I'm sure. A great example is that last year it took how long to sell out of 3 day passes and Fri/Sat badges? Exactly.
4. And this is just a personally gripe. If you think you can do better, then don't go to PAX and come up with a huge, highly sought after and amazing convention of your own. I won't be there...but you can tell us all later about how you're so much more successful then PA.
Basically, if you really don't think they care, then why are you here? They know that things didn't run smoothly...and I'm sure they will have a different plan of action for Prime, AUS and East next year(and so on). If you truly don't think they care then they obviously won't be reading your comments...right? Unless of course you have something that is useful to include other then "they don't care about us, that much is obvious".
To the people who have SUCH a huge problem with the way that they run the ticketing...I say this(and mostly because I'm annoyed that so many people have nothing but bad things to say):
1. Yes those of us who saw the link on Twitter may have gotten there first, but that was because they tried something NEW by announcing it...and yes...that was new. Their site being refreshed that hard was an unwanted result, which is why they did the best they could to put it up to the other place where they post official links. Should it have been on Kiko's before Official PAX; no. But it was a quick "what can we do to actually get people passes" judgement call.
2. They are not saying they don't care. They are saying they are trying different things to try to find the optimal way to release hotels and passes. As they and others have said...it is overall a supply vs demand issue. The issue with the "Coming Soon" still being up past the point when the 3 day passes were able to be purchased WAS a demand issue. There was so much demand that it crashed their site. And they normally don't have that first rush of demand on the site I doubt because they normally don't tell people in advance when tickets will be released.
3. You can't find the correct way to do things without trying new things. Excluding PAX AUS they have two shots at this a year. Demand has only risen each year. They are still trying to catch up with that demand but every time they try the demand is 5X greater I'm sure. A great example is that last year it took how long to sell out of 3 day passes and Fri/Sat badges? Exactly.
4. And this is just a personally gripe. If you think you can do better, then don't go to PAX and come up with a huge, highly sought after and amazing convention of your own. I won't be there...but you can tell us all later about how you're so much more successful then PA.
Basically, if you really don't think they care, then why are you here? They know that things didn't run smoothly...and I'm sure they will have a different plan of action for Prime, AUS and East next year(and so on). If you truly don't think they care then they obviously won't be reading your comments...right? Unless of course you have something that is useful to include other then "they don't care about us, that much is obvious".
I have updated file systems of websites that are under denial attacks. I'm not saying that all webservers have this ability, but I assume most modern ones do. Tomcat does. Have you seen any PA people say they were struggling to update their files? I've seen people suggesting such a thing (maybe you) in these forums, but I do not believe it. I think it was just an omission.
If you ignore that, if putting out the badges on #RKhoo or on a little used forum was a 'we dont know what else to do!' solution, why not just NOT put out any information for an hour and then let the traffic ebb a little and update it when you can. And then put it on twitter/forums/wherever.
If you are going to say that since this was new, and they didn't anticipate the consequences, I say: how could you not? It was the first thing that went through my head when i saw the announcement. 'Great, its gonna be a zoo at noon.'
Beyond all of that, this is the issue I have that goes so far beyond S&D and into fairness. If person 1 (official website) was trying to get tickets five minutes before person 2 (yay, someone retweeted the site), person 1 should have gotten the tickets. To put out a large missive and say people are angry because of S&D is as correct as their 'Coming Soon' link was.
Snipping to cut out the stuff which has already been debunked numerous times or is just obvious trolling (and there's some SERIOUSLY obvious trolling going on here):
Should it have been on Kiko's before Official PAX; no. But it was a quick "what can we do to actually get people passes" judgement call.
Then that was obviously the wrong call and delaying it shortly with a message on offical_pax, khou's, and whoever else's twitter saying, "sorry, we're getting hammered, we're gonna try this again in X mins/hours" would have been the right way to do it.
3. You can't find the correct way to do things without trying new things.
You are absolutely right. Which is what makes statements that boil down to "well, these other methods others are suggesting won't 100% fix the problem, so even if they'll fix it somewhat, we're not interested in trying them" so frustrating to many.
When it comes down to it, if their answer is, "we don't want to make it better, we want to make it perfect," then the only real answers are to either have more PAX's in the same region (NY for East, Portland or San Fran for Prime, for instance), which will help bring down demand per PAX, and let them catch up to it, spread it out over more days, and/or to move to a larger site which can come closer to accommodating demand. Well, either that, or make PAX less awesome so demand goes down that way. But that's not a good answer.
To the people who have SUCH a huge problem with the way that they run the ticketing...I say this(and mostly because I'm annoyed that so many people have nothing but bad things to say):
1. Yes those of us who saw the link on Twitter may have gotten there first, but that was because they tried something NEW by announcing it...and yes...that was new. Their site being refreshed that hard was an unwanted result, which is why they did the best they could to put it up to the other place where they post official links. Should it have been on Kiko's before Official PAX; no. But it was a quick "what can we do to actually get people passes" judgement call.
2. They are not saying they don't care. They are saying they are trying different things to try to find the optimal way to release hotels and passes. As they and others have said...it is overall a supply vs demand issue. The issue with the "Coming Soon" still being up past the point when the 3 day passes were able to be purchased WAS a demand issue. There was so much demand that it crashed their site. And they normally don't have that first rush of demand on the site I doubt because they normally don't tell people in advance when tickets will be released.
3. You can't find the correct way to do things without trying new things. Excluding PAX AUS they have two shots at this a year. Demand has only risen each year. They are still trying to catch up with that demand but every time they try the demand is 5X greater I'm sure. A great example is that last year it took how long to sell out of 3 day passes and Fri/Sat badges? Exactly.
4. And this is just a personally gripe. If you think you can do better, then don't go to PAX and come up with a huge, highly sought after and amazing convention of your own. I won't be there...but you can tell us all later about how you're so much more successful then PA.
Basically, if you really don't think they care, then why are you here? They know that things didn't run smoothly...and I'm sure they will have a different plan of action for Prime, AUS and East next year(and so on). If you truly don't think they care then they obviously won't be reading your comments...right? Unless of course you have something that is useful to include other then "they don't care about us, that much is obvious".
I have updated file systems of websites that are under denial attacks. I'm not saying that all webservers have this ability, but I assume most modern ones do. Tomcat does. Have you seen any PA people say they were struggling to update their files? I've seen people suggesting such a thing (maybe you) in these forums, but I do not believe it. I think it was just an omission.
If you ignore that, if putting out the badges on #RKhoo or on a little used forum was a 'we dont know what else to do!' solution, why not just NOT put out any information for an hour and then let the traffic ebb a little and update it when you can. And then put it on twitter/forums/wherever.
If you are going to say that since this was new, and they didn't anticipate the consequences, I say: how could you not? It was the first thing that went through my head when i saw the announcement. 'Great, its gonna be a zoo at noon.'
Beyond all of that, this is the issue I have that goes so far beyond S&D and into fairness. If person 1 (official website) was trying to get tickets five minutes before person 2 (yay, someone retweeted the site), person 1 should have gotten the tickets. To put out a large missive and say people are angry because of S&D is as correct as their 'Coming Soon' link was.
You call this a 'little used forum'...but it is the Official PAX East Forum...um...hello?
As far as who first said that they couldn't get into their site...I'm not going to say names on who I believe it was the first time, but while I wasn't the first I did say it yes. The information I had received, from someone that I trust, was that they couldn't get into the backdoor they had set up to update the site.
I agree that putting the information out there early was a mistake, but that is all opinion. That being said, every year everyone complains that they don't provide the information early at all. If nothing else this is a reason to say 'We finally tried it, and it didn't work. Let's go back to NOT announcing it.' You have to try new things that the 'masses' want at times even if everyone knows it will be a crazy mess.
As far as if person 1 was there before person 2 and person two got the tickets because of a tweet....Personally I can tell you that I was refreshing from about 9am Central on. I was refreshing the website, the forums, Twitter, the Hotels page, and on top of that had a group convo going on FB in case any of us saw when it was up before others(and I was at work, I just moved meetings and such. Unproductive compared to my norm, but still I was getting everything done).
As far as fairness...all they can do is their best. Their best to them may not satisfy your needs...but as everyone has said the people who were able to acquire the passes are obviously happier then others. I was on the other side of the fence last year. I didn't get any tickets at all, so I had to get them from Ebay and pay a major premium for them. Was I overjoyed by this? No. Did I accept it as there are only so many tickets and I will sometimes be the one who doesn't get tickets and has to pay the premium? Yes.
In a perfect world everything is fair and just and no one misses out on the best deals. This is not a perfect world, and the PA staff can only do their best to improve the process from one event to the next, while dealing with an ever growing fan base and demand for their events.
I personally think that the PAX staff understands the issues surrounding the website, and the launch itself and how that was handled. Do I have proof of that to offer? No I do not. I also understand why those who were affected by those issues would be frustrated over not having those very specific issues addressed in this FAQ. I don't think any of that makes what they *did* address any less relevant or correct though. PA and PAX have never hidden their contact information, and if you want more out of them you can send some reasonable correspondence.
@00Fayt00 I think that suggesting that someone go make their own convention is a bit disingenuous and not conversing in good faith. If you'd like to discuss this further, PM me.
Aww, they didn't answer the pricing question (which I thought was common enough - why 3-day passes are so much cheaper and cheaper than 2 one-day passes etc).
Also, do people think that having a "student discount" if you register with a valid college address would be a nice idea? I realize that would require a bunch of setting up but I know it's something a few other conventions try to do.
Also, do people think that having a "student discount" if you register with a valid college address would be a nice idea? I realize that would require a bunch of setting up but I know it's something a few other conventions try to do.
I think conventions mostly do that when they're trying to attract a stronger student attendance or a higher attendance overall. I think that's the last concern of PAX at the moment, being that all the people who want to go, can't even go right now.
@00Fayt00 I think that suggesting that someone go make their own convention is a bit disingenuous and not conversing in good faith. If you'd like to discuss this further, PM me.
My bad Zerzhul. I just dislike people seeming to think that PA doesn't know how to run their own convention. They are trying things to the best of their ability each and every PAX. But noted and agreed, won't happen again.
Also, do people think that having a "student discount" if you register with a valid college address would be a nice idea? I realize that would require a bunch of setting up but I know it's something a few other conventions try to do.
I think conventions mostly do that when they're trying to attract a stronger student attendance or a higher attendance overall. I think that's the last concern of PAX at the moment, being that all the people who want to go, can't even go right now.
There actually is a pretty good student discount for PAX Dev, for students who want to get into the game industry. I know it doesn't help with this specific issue (for the precise reason Schmulki is stating), but that's the sort of place where you're likely to see a student discount come into play.
Before I saying anything let me start by acknowledging that this is "my fault" for not checking in the "right places" but please bear with me.
In the future it would be nice if the fact that tickets for PAX East (or any of them) were going on sale was announced on the main Penny Arcade site. I was told that it was announced through twitter (thankfully, not everyone uses twitter) and the actual PAX site (I don't normally keep tabs on the PAX site months and months prior to the event). Considering how quickly these tickets sell out it seems like generally a good idea to throw up the announcement that they're going on sale in big letters on the main site a day or two before they're available. I missed my shot this year as I found out that they were on sale through an Escapist article saying "PAX East tickets completely sold out!" which was pretty disappointing to read considering I didn't even know they were going on sale.
Again, I know, "my bad" for not scouring the web for this information in advance. But this seems like the kind of thing the PA guys should be shouting for the rooftops on all their interweb-venues, especially the main site. We get huge updates from Gabe every time there's a new Pin coming out, so why not this? Please give us poor luddites who are not on "tha twitters" a chance to also fail at buying tickets, just like everyone else
Posts
PAX East 2018 4-Day Pass [X] BYOC Pass [X] Hotel Reservation [X]
See y'all at PAX East 2018!
3 Single Day Passes [x]
Hotel [x]
Flights [x]
Packed []
Excitement[x]
————————————
PAX East 12'
PAX East 13'
PAX East 14'
PAX East 15'
This.
@caerulean_blue
They were talking about Knitted Steel, made by @Liger.
@grayfawkes. I've been concerned about losing my badge every year. That is a great idea!
@noisymunk That's the one! Thanks for the link.
Those are pretty awesome!
This is a wonderful idea.
No official reselling spot coupled with no refunds.
See this is why I love this forum! Ideas like this helps me be better prepared the next time around. I'm always afraid I'll lose my badge
3DS Friend Code: 2449-5711-0640
http://east.paxsite.com/news/the-pax-east-registration-faq
Yeah, I'm a spelling nazi, what of it??
3 Single Day Passes [x]
Hotel [x]
Flights [x]
Packed []
Excitement[x]
————————————
PAX East 12'
PAX East 13'
PAX East 14'
PAX East 15'
Right, and because it's not completely solvable, they don't care to try anything new, because even if it might be better, it won't be perfect.
but they did try something new this year...They announced it ahead of time and used that new queue system. both those things were not done last year.
3 Single Day Passes [x]
Hotel [x]
Flights [x]
Packed []
Excitement[x]
————————————
PAX East 12'
PAX East 13'
PAX East 14'
PAX East 15'
Well, yes, having websites not crash is a good thing (which was failed this time, so that wasn't achieved). As for defining "better," that's quite simple. Getting badges is a game. There need to be defined rules on how to win that "game." If people are not given defined rules which are followed, or they're given rules just to find out they're not really rules, people get angry.
Rules:
"If you do X, you will get tickets."
"If you show up to <place>/<time>, you will see the link to get tickets."
"If you go to this site at this time, you will get a hotel room."
"If X breaks, Y is the backup plan, so look there."
None of those were either stated or followed and I don't see anything to tell me that those are going to happen. So, the system won't really improve.
I cut it pretty close myself. I had the queue on my phone and pc, it loaded on my phone and bought my pass. A minute later it loaded on my pc and they were gone.
Not that the official PAX East website incorrectly said that passes were 'Coming Soon' up until the point they were sold out. Or the back door ways were the only way to get passes. Or that the pricing encourages people who are only going two days to buy 3 day passes. Or that by announcing 'its tomorrow' basically screws people who have been checking every day for months.
Silly me. It's all comes down to an unsolvable economics problem.
Well the people who got their tickets at the expense of people hammering the un-updated websites probably are happy. Supply and demand, not anyone being screwed.
Also, where in this post do you see the PA people taking the technical issues (although I contend they aren't only technical, but also in planning and philosophy) seriously?
1. Yes those of us who saw the link on Twitter may have gotten there first, but that was because they tried something NEW by announcing it...and yes...that was new. Their site being refreshed that hard was an unwanted result, which is why they did the best they could to put it up to the other place where they post official links. Should it have been on Kiko's before Official PAX; no. But it was a quick "what can we do to actually get people passes" judgement call.
2. They are not saying they don't care. They are saying they are trying different things to try to find the optimal way to release hotels and passes. As they and others have said...it is overall a supply vs demand issue. The issue with the "Coming Soon" still being up past the point when the 3 day passes were able to be purchased WAS a demand issue. There was so much demand that it crashed their site. And they normally don't have that first rush of demand on the site I doubt because they normally don't tell people in advance when tickets will be released.
3. You can't find the correct way to do things without trying new things. Excluding PAX AUS they have two shots at this a year. Demand has only risen each year. They are still trying to catch up with that demand but every time they try the demand is 5X greater I'm sure. A great example is that last year it took how long to sell out of 3 day passes and Fri/Sat badges? Exactly.
4. And this is just a personally gripe. If you think you can do better, then don't go to PAX and come up with a huge, highly sought after and amazing convention of your own. I won't be there...but you can tell us all later about how you're so much more successful then PA.
Basically, if you really don't think they care, then why are you here? They know that things didn't run smoothly...and I'm sure they will have a different plan of action for Prime, AUS and East next year(and so on). If you truly don't think they care then they obviously won't be reading your comments...right? Unless of course you have something that is useful to include other then "they don't care about us, that much is obvious".
I have updated file systems of websites that are under denial attacks. I'm not saying that all webservers have this ability, but I assume most modern ones do. Tomcat does. Have you seen any PA people say they were struggling to update their files? I've seen people suggesting such a thing (maybe you) in these forums, but I do not believe it. I think it was just an omission.
If you ignore that, if putting out the badges on #RKhoo or on a little used forum was a 'we dont know what else to do!' solution, why not just NOT put out any information for an hour and then let the traffic ebb a little and update it when you can. And then put it on twitter/forums/wherever.
If you are going to say that since this was new, and they didn't anticipate the consequences, I say: how could you not? It was the first thing that went through my head when i saw the announcement. 'Great, its gonna be a zoo at noon.'
Beyond all of that, this is the issue I have that goes so far beyond S&D and into fairness. If person 1 (official website) was trying to get tickets five minutes before person 2 (yay, someone retweeted the site), person 1 should have gotten the tickets. To put out a large missive and say people are angry because of S&D is as correct as their 'Coming Soon' link was.
Then that was obviously the wrong call and delaying it shortly with a message on offical_pax, khou's, and whoever else's twitter saying, "sorry, we're getting hammered, we're gonna try this again in X mins/hours" would have been the right way to do it.
You are absolutely right. Which is what makes statements that boil down to "well, these other methods others are suggesting won't 100% fix the problem, so even if they'll fix it somewhat, we're not interested in trying them" so frustrating to many.
When it comes down to it, if their answer is, "we don't want to make it better, we want to make it perfect," then the only real answers are to either have more PAX's in the same region (NY for East, Portland or San Fran for Prime, for instance), which will help bring down demand per PAX, and let them catch up to it, spread it out over more days, and/or to move to a larger site which can come closer to accommodating demand. Well, either that, or make PAX less awesome so demand goes down that way. But that's not a good answer.
You call this a 'little used forum'...but it is the Official PAX East Forum...um...hello?
As far as who first said that they couldn't get into their site...I'm not going to say names on who I believe it was the first time, but while I wasn't the first I did say it yes. The information I had received, from someone that I trust, was that they couldn't get into the backdoor they had set up to update the site.
I agree that putting the information out there early was a mistake, but that is all opinion. That being said, every year everyone complains that they don't provide the information early at all. If nothing else this is a reason to say 'We finally tried it, and it didn't work. Let's go back to NOT announcing it.' You have to try new things that the 'masses' want at times even if everyone knows it will be a crazy mess.
As far as if person 1 was there before person 2 and person two got the tickets because of a tweet....Personally I can tell you that I was refreshing from about 9am Central on. I was refreshing the website, the forums, Twitter, the Hotels page, and on top of that had a group convo going on FB in case any of us saw when it was up before others(and I was at work, I just moved meetings and such. Unproductive compared to my norm, but still I was getting everything done).
As far as fairness...all they can do is their best. Their best to them may not satisfy your needs...but as everyone has said the people who were able to acquire the passes are obviously happier then others. I was on the other side of the fence last year. I didn't get any tickets at all, so I had to get them from Ebay and pay a major premium for them. Was I overjoyed by this? No. Did I accept it as there are only so many tickets and I will sometimes be the one who doesn't get tickets and has to pay the premium? Yes.
In a perfect world everything is fair and just and no one misses out on the best deals. This is not a perfect world, and the PA staff can only do their best to improve the process from one event to the next, while dealing with an ever growing fan base and demand for their events.
Contact info for PAX: http://twitter.com/official_pax and pax_questions@paxsite.com
Contact info for PA: http://www.penny-arcade.com/contact
Also, do people think that having a "student discount" if you register with a valid college address would be a nice idea? I realize that would require a bunch of setting up but I know it's something a few other conventions try to do.
I think conventions mostly do that when they're trying to attract a stronger student attendance or a higher attendance overall. I think that's the last concern of PAX at the moment, being that all the people who want to go, can't even go right now.
My bad Zerzhul. I just dislike people seeming to think that PA doesn't know how to run their own convention. They are trying things to the best of their ability each and every PAX.
I knew this was going to happen soon, was going to buy a Sunday pass to complete a 3 day pass but atleast I will be going Friday and Saturday.
In the future it would be nice if the fact that tickets for PAX East (or any of them) were going on sale was announced on the main Penny Arcade site. I was told that it was announced through twitter (thankfully, not everyone uses twitter) and the actual PAX site (I don't normally keep tabs on the PAX site months and months prior to the event). Considering how quickly these tickets sell out it seems like generally a good idea to throw up the announcement that they're going on sale in big letters on the main site a day or two before they're available. I missed my shot this year as I found out that they were on sale through an Escapist article saying "PAX East tickets completely sold out!" which was pretty disappointing to read considering I didn't even know they were going on sale.
Again, I know, "my bad" for not scouring the web for this information in advance. But this seems like the kind of thing the PA guys should be shouting for the rooftops on all their interweb-venues, especially the main site. We get huge updates from Gabe every time there's a new Pin coming out, so why not this? Please give us poor luddites who are not on "tha twitters" a chance to also fail at buying tickets, just like everyone else