Terrible news everyone! None of the Lore Hound staff got a BlizzCon ticket thus far. Pixiestixy and Amatera both got decent spots in line, or so we thought, then were horribly disappointed to get booted from the queue when tickets sold out as they crept up to only a few hundred spots from the front of the line.
However, more tickets will be available on Saturday morning.
The queueing system is a solution for too many people trying to buy tickets at once and crashing the server. In essence, it stretches the refresh page race out from an immediate purchase page to a leisurely activity once you are actually able to get into the queue. It allows them to optimize a queueing server and a checkout server for the rush and give people enough time to make sure their purchasing information is correct. Its a genius solution to the problems that used to plague ticket sales, and a model for businesses like Ticketmaster — but is there a better way to put players in a queue?
The way I see it, the people most likely to want to go are the people most into Blizzard games. They have all of your gaming information on your Battle.net account, so why not use it? A gearscore of 6800? You get to cut a thousand people into the queue. Rated above 1800 in arena? Take another few steps forward. Diamond league in the SC2 beta? Come on down! Combined /played is more than 3 years? Instant front of queue.
And why have the queueing system at tickets? Blizzard should sell hotel rooms and match you with roommates. It could suggest your guildmates and people from your friends list. Even better, you can suggest a role, like main chef (orders pizza), PPS (photos per second), or cleaner (to keep your slobby roommates from dying in their filth of pizza grease and sweat from the con floor). I can guarantee you I am on a paparazzi level of PPS. I have a perfectly timed rotation with flash, snap, flash, snap, switch SD card. I deserve to get roomed with the best main chefs and cleaners.
How do you think Blizzard should handle the queue? Is the randomness of the first-come-first-serve system fair?
Bigger venue IMO
What makes it worse is that tickets are already going for hundreds of dollars a pop on eBay. Sure, If I had one, I’d consider selling it, but only if I wasn’t able to make it to the event myself.
Preference to blizzcon veterans! >.>
FCFS.
Well, my girlfriend got us 2 tickets for Blizzcon which is pretty sweet. We made a deal, if she managed to get tickets for Blizzcon ’10, I’d pay the plane tickets to the U.S.
I should have think twice before saying yes to that, but still I’m willing to do that ;)
I understand you’re disappointed Heartbourne, but you can’t really think people with higher gear score or starcraft rank deserve a higher place.
“The way I see it, the people most likely to want to go are the people most into Blizzard games.”
Neglecting the fact that you seem to think that people who are more into the games deserve to be moved up in the queue, I don’t see how GS is a relevant factor to describe your enjoyment for the game. There is no way of measuring enjoyment from the information Blizzard has; GS is based on skill/time/reason for playing; /played is based on your free time more than your enjoyment; achievement points are based on time/reason for playing; and gold is based on your reason for playing. There may be some other factor that I’m missing out that is completely based on enjoyment, but no combination of the few I pointed out is.
I myself am going off to University next year (hopefully) and being student at the moment as well as having to get lots of money for the fees, means I can’t really afford to go off to Blizzcon even though I really want to. Does this mean I should get a discount and be moved to the front of the queue? No, because that would be unfair for absolutely every one else. So I’m going to get updates of all the juicy stuff from several internet sites, which I hope will include Lore Hound from the event itself, since it would be great if you can go. I will possibly pay for the live feed (I can probably stretch the £15 or so it will be), but I’m not going to whine about it, which is all this post is.
To sum up, less QQ, more refreshing for the next batch of tickets, and good luck.
I give you ticketmaster. The biggest example of why online purchases… does. not. work.
They should just announce: “Tickets go on sale for scalpers today. Never mind what they cost, you’ll all get shafted for hundreds of dollars while they get rich. And us? We get our tickets sold, so who cares. Enjoy!”
@Arthoul
You forgot to mention the exuberant “convenience fee.”
This is a serious post and you should take it completely seriously.
Spr srs bsns
It seems ebay is trying to pull the blizzcon tickets off as fast as they can. One says buy his personal WoW art for $299 and get a ticket free lol