PAX Prime 2014 Roll Call

Hey duders! Who's all goin to this thing!?

I'm prolly goin all 4 days. At least that's what my passes say =] I'm sure there'll be some GB meetups here and there aside from the Giant Bomb panel itself~ Maybe we can set up something for all us forum goers as well on the side~

I'll be there all four days! Which probably means something really dumb is gonna happen! :D

Got all four days, hopefully will attend the GB meetup. In retrospect I shouldn't have flown in on the very first day but the hotels were already sold out by the time I got my tickets.

Anyhoo, looking forward to potentially meeting/hanging out with fellow Duders.

Never fails, missed out again. I guess that's what I get for having things to do, crushed.

Enjoy the good times in Seattle!

I managed to pull it off! I've never been to a GB meetup before and I'M ON AN ADRENALINE HIGH RIGHT NOW SO LETS DO THIS THING ARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

When did tickets open up?

@bocam: 10AM Pacific this morning. They're already sold out.

Forgot to mention that I'm going all four days!

TOM SERVO!

CROWWWWWWW!

It's gonna be hard to top a John Drake body pillow =P

I met up with a lotta duders during the shirt exchange. Unfortunately, we didn't all really hang out much cept trading names and shakin hands. Hopefully there'll be something more of a community get together this time around =]

PAX!

Round 12! (for me)

FIGHT!

I couldn't get tickets! I hope my friend'll pull through with some. Failing that I'll buy them on Craig's list. This is my seventh year, it'd be crazy to stop now.

Will be there. Missed out on Saturday tickets. Perfectly content to call that an "explore Seattle" day.

Last year, the four-day stretch of PAX wiped me out. Might actually be kind of nice to spend a day in the city mucking around.

Yump, I'll be there, assuming I can get off work for a long weekend.

@itwongo: What's the Craigslist gambit like? Have you had to do it before? There's NO WAY I'm paying the current scalping prices, does the cost deflate as it gets closer to the doors opening?

@reisz: The cheapest you'd be able to find a four day pass on craigslist is around 275 bucks (but don't hold your breath). The way Penny Arcade sells their tickets is horrible.

count me in as a "maybe" right now. for all 4 days.

I'll be there! I moved to Seattle recently, so I couldn't afford to miss it this year!

I'm going all 4 days.

I'm there Saturday to Monday.

Every day on the show floor before it opens and after it closes. If you guys do a dinner thing, let me know.

How would you suggest they do it? There's no good way. They're going to sell out immediately no matter when they do it.

@marino: People just get bitter because they sell out immediately and in the same breath 100 listings for four day passes go up on eBay for $700 each. You can understand that surely, makes sense to me, that sort of profiteering feels gross no matter how you look at it. In my experience Blizzcon doesn't have anywhere near the scalping problem Pax does, if you had to have an account for every badge and matching ID on site it would go a long way to reduce the appeal of scalping . Hell Comic-con staff spot check for passes on the floor, there are ways to make the target audience of PAX feel better about the process but the organisers have to decide it's worth the time/money.

Khoo's talked about this before and what Marino says is true: there's no "better" way to do it.

PA has tried a couple things to make it easier for someone to get into PAX though. They've added to the amount of one-day passes available, not sure if they've decreased the amount of 3-days or kept them the same. The idea is to have people come for maybe one day or two out of the four, but instead people end up buying four one day passes because they've got the dosh to do it. They've added a whole day to the convention (4 days of work for me now, woo), but people want to be there the whole time. PA literally can't sell more tickets until the Washington State Convention Center expands, because they're running up against the limit imposed by fire safety whatever. People think magical fairy "scalpers" are buying up a billion passes and reselling them, but they're not. There's a rational limit to how many you can buy. The passes you see for sale on eBay or Craigslist or whatever are normally from real normal people. I sold a 3-day PAX East pass on eBay in 2013 for like $70 when I found out I was going to be an Enforcer and didn't need it.

Would you rather have a randomized lottery, like San Diego Comic-Con? That's a frustrating system.

It'd be a way huge hassle but I'd rather have no badges mailed out and every badge only available for pick up at the show using the same credit card the passes were originally purchased with. That or some other form of identification tied to the pass at time of purchase. You could still buy and sell passes sure, but at least it'd limit scalpers to actually having to be at the location of the show. As for adding more one day passes, that feels more like a money grab than anything else since you end up paying $30+ more for 4 1 day passes than one 4 day pass. I get that maybe there's some extra cost to getting those extra badges made and mailed but it sure as hell isn't anywhere near that expensive.

I didn't get a pass but this is the first pax since I moved to seattle and I'm probably gonna go check it out and see what I can see?

Welcome to the area! How do u like it so far and where did you come from? =D

Im going all 4 days! Can't wait!

Oh, god. No. Absolutely not. No. No. Hell no.

Two years ago, PAX tried an approach that would allow people to pick up and put together their own swag bags, rather than spend the time to put them together have them ready for hand-out in the queue room every morning. That was a complete clusterfuck and wasted hours and hours of people's time. If they did a mandatory badge check-in/pick-up, I'm willing to bet that it would be about a thousand times worse.

I'm thinking under the assumption that they execute it relatively well. The swag bag thing sounds terrible but if I understand what you're saying correctly, I'd have to guess the bulk of it was having people put together their own bags... Don't ever let giant lines of ppl do anything more than they absolutely have to to keep the line moving. In this case it'd be a matter of looking at an ID and checking if the name matches the tickets and forking over some passes. Basically Will Call. I'd guess that waiting in a line for an additional hour or two for most people is better than either paying exorbitant scalper fee and not knowing if the pass they receive is legit or maybe not going at all. Also, I just hate the idea of scalpers making money off this kind of bullshit. *shrug*

I'm sure ppl have thought out how to do this, it just really feels like what's going on now is the bare minimum. Limiting the number of passes you can buy in one go at queue... Pretty weak.

It's not that much of a limitation, honestly, given that you can buy up to four of each kind of pass in a single go through the queue.

Looks like I'll be there all 4 days again. If it's anything like last year's, people who didn't get passes can easily buy them off the classy guys smoking giant cigars outside the center for a few bucks over regular price.

Tell me about it :P. I can say I'm leaving myself a wider berth to just enjoy the show since it's my first Prime but I should be doing something ;)

I love Seattle! I moved here from Ethel, a tiny place in southwest Washington

I just got here about a year and half ago and it's pretty damn rad. Coming from the LA area, the air is so damn clean and loving the trees! See you at PAX =D

And four is a rational size for a group of friends or a family. Kids under a certain age don't need passes afaik.

Just bought a pass for Saturday! Plan on riding the train up from Portland, never done that before so looking forward to that as well.

I'll be there all four days. I'm a Seattle native born and raised so I should know a thing or two. Speaking of, is anyone planning on going to Bumbershoot happening at the Seattle Center also during Labor Day weekend?

I'm all in.

Damn I am pumped for this year. Also pumped to get another GB shirt thanks to @fobwashed! And meet him and all the other duders that will be there.

I'm looking at the shirts right now... They're pretty cool =P

Any after panel festivities on Saturday night?

I'm going to be there Saturday Sunday! It's my first time so be gentle.

Anyway to get in Friday?

I'm there! And live near by, so whatever is going on.. would be awesome to meet some giant bomb duders. Just moved here 4 weeks ago, so looking forward to seeing anyone who lives around here.

Any meetups going on Friday night?