Stormblood [4.0]: Post may contain potential spoilers.
Plum Springs and Fanfest 2023
This is the first time I’ve ever been here. Its nice in a way. I wonder if there were any fruits on the trees themselves. Now that I think about it. I should’ve checked before hopping off the game today. Either way, this area is somewhat reminescient to that of a hidden springs almost. I wouldn’t go that far, but you can only reach it through flight and I didn’t have access to that till about a month ago. You know what? After looking at the screenshot a few more times. I kind’ve wish I didn’t have my character there. The main reason why I did was because I had a hard time determining what the subject would be, but looking at it again. I would go as far to say that it seems better without it.
There are a few times where I find the lighting to be quite phenomenal. Especially, with that hazy/foggy area up on the cliff. It almost adds a certain level of calmness to the shot.
I don’t think there’s much else to say other than to talk a bit about the 2023 Fanfest.
Fanfest FFXIV 2023
For the uninitiated, the FanFest (or more accurately Final Fantasy Festival) is more or less a convention that is primarily geared towards FFXIV. Although, I can imagine alot of general Final Fantasy stuff also existing. I’ve mentioned this in like February when they had an application phase for the player lottery tickets. To be quite blunt, I didn’t succeed in getting one there. Today was the “General Sales” tickets that were sort’ve meant to be the scraps from players whom didn’t buy tickets initially. There’s only one problem with the general sale…
Here’s a link to the main page for the FanFest: https://fanfest.finalfantasyxiv.com/
“First come, First serve”
So yeah, I didn’t get a ticket at all. Let me be clear, this is going to be a bit of a rant, but will also delve a bit into how purchasing of tickets functioned. To start off, the tickets were “claimed” to be first come first serve via Showclix. A few hours before the availability for buying tickets you will be stuck with a landing page. This landing page goes into the detail as to how the tickets will be sold and how much time you will have to purchase one. Essentially, you and however many others on the landing page before 9am PDT. Will be randomly placed onto the line for purchasing tickets after 9 am. Whoever else shows up after 9am will be tossed at the end of the line.
Afterwards, the system will process the “first people” in line. Once selected, you will be able to purchase up to 2 tickets within 10 minutes and also typing in the names of the ticketholders. If you were to proceed through the entire purchase process without being kicked out. You’re good! Now lets talk about the problem with this whole system. to be more specfic. Let’s talk about how in reality, this system was a weighted lottery.
The Issue with General Ticket Sales
The crux of the problem was that no matter how many hours you waited on the landing page (I waited for 3 hours). You will be place in queue at a random point even with someone who had just joined in the last minute before 9am. As such, it essentially became a glorified raffle instead of a “First come, First serve” method. Now you may be thinking, “Well it might just be a lottery anyhow, but wouldn’t everyone have an equal chance on getting a ticket?”. You wouldn’t be wrong if it wasn’t for the fact that every seperate device or browser counted as an individual entry.
What this means, is that someone could have multiple devices setup with various browsers (also incognito) all on the landing page with an unique user code. Once the page hit 9am, all of those devices and browsers would be placed at random points in the queue on their own. Resulting in someone having an increased chance on purchasing a ticket. I know this, because I tested it with my phone while I had my computer up and running at the same time. They were both on different sections in the queue.
This is what irked me so much when I find myself realizing that I wouldn’t be receiving a ticket. I learned last night that there was going to be a queue and that I should try hopping in early to try to get a reasonable chance of receiving a ticket. Instead, once I was on the landing page. I learned that queue placement was random and being early had no impact. I accepted that fact because to be quite honest. A first come first serve approach still would’ve been a glorified lottery since the tickets were being sold online. There would be no way to know if there’s even a chance to get a ticket. As such I accepted it till I learned right around 9am that you could’ve exploited the system with multiple devices.
At the moment of realization. I was quite sad for a bit. Mainly decided to try and get some sleep and prepare for work. The unfortunate reality was that there’s nothing that can be done with the situation. I missed out on my chance. However. If there was one thing that burned inside me. It was that I wished that they simply did another run of the player-only lottery. Am I salty? Who isn’t!?! (On a serious note. It is what it is.)
To be quite honest, I was planning to go on a whole other tangent talking about alternative ways only to lose interest and steam. To keep it simple. I believe the folks whom collaborated on this could’ve informed the user-base on the “randomness”. In fact, based on this link from Showclix. You have to contact them 2 weeks in advanced if you expect high volume in ticket sales. (https://showclix.elevio.help/en/articles/61720-queuing-a-large-scale-onsale) This means that they had to be aware of this and could’ve potentially inform the nature of the “First come, First serve” method.
Regardless. I don’t want to proceed much further on the topic. Instead, I would like to talk a bit about what my plans were if I had went.
Original Plans
Essentially, I was going to use it as an opportunity to interact with some folks. Try to see if I could make some friends from the whole event. While I have some friends that play FFXIV. I wanted to try to get more so that accomplishing certain aspects of the game would’ve been easier to do. Plus I don’t like playing with randoms to an extent.
Now the other reason behind all of this. I wanted to use it as chance to try and “promote” this blog. As selfish as it may seems. Look, I just want to have more eyes on this site and want more opinions. There’s not a huge amount that I would want, but this event was one of those things that felt like I couldn’t miss. Missing out, would’ve put a hamper on my mood. Then again, I’m a bit of a shy person and there was a strong chance in which none of what I wanted to do would happen. The only realistic thing that would’ve happen. Was that I would take pictures of the whole event and uploard them onto this blog.
My current plans now
Now that I have failed to acquire tickets. What now? Welp. Its gonna be the same probably. Its hard to say since alot could happen in 130 days till Fanfest. Although, I want to see if I could do something major before the event. It would benefit me one way or another.
Fun fact, I was planning on going to Las Vegas anyways that week since I have family there. Although, I might reconsider since the heat would be a nuisance now that the event ain’t no longer an option.
Conclusion
I gotta say. Quite the post. I knew that today would be a fairly long one, but its still surprising to see the wall of text on my screen. One other thing to note is that tomorrow is a rather important day. Its kind’ve weird that March has become this very important month for me all of a sudden. I blame the Fanfest mostly.
Anyhow, I hope you folks have a good day/night!
Ah crap, I almost forgot about one thing. No, this ticket sale method didn’t stop scalpers from scalping them. In fact, I would highly advise against purchasing any tickets from scalpers unless you are willing to risk the chance of getting nothing out of it. The main reason being that the scalpers are the ones who hold all of the control on the tickets and they are the only ones who can change the ticketholder names. Nothing is stopping them from not changing the names nor selling them to someone else. This is your advisement that I highly recommend following. Although, I understand if you are willing to go down that path. Whether its a good thing or not. I don’t want to follow that path simply because I can’t afford to waste a ludricous amount of money.