Ah, it has been a while...

Greetings friends,

It has been a while. Let's start off with the Blizzcon ticket fiasco.

BLIZZCON:

So Blizzcon is once again coming to the Anaheim Convention Center and as always, there is great anticipation. This year they gained more hall space and thus increased tickets 50%, making the total number of people that can be in attendance 12,000 people.

Tickets were to go on sale on August 11th at some point during the day. What follows is the chronicle of my journey to obtain these tickets.

August 10th:
The plan is simple, wait up until midnight and purchase the tickets. This is what I do.

August 11th:
Midnight comes and I'm refreshing the site, but it is to no avail. Around 3am I give up and decide to pass out for 2 hours.
5 AM, I awake and begin my F5 refresh extravaganza.
6 AM, tickets go on sale! "Hurray," I think. The first screen passes, I enter 5 tickets. The second screen comes up, I enter ALL the ticket information, and then...



Okay, no big deal. I hit F5 and then get to enter my Credit Card information. The next screen I get, "OOPS." Thus begins the F5 spam fest. For the next 3 hours I continue to run 4 browsers refreshing various steps of the checkout process.

Blizzard posters are saying that the store is experiencing "a very high level of traffic and to be patient."

Well, I continue on this for another few hours, when at approximately 9am my friend who works at Blizzard tells me that there is a ticket open on the issue and that it has something to do with people being unable to complete the checkout process.
Mind you at this point, Blizzard is saying that nobody has been able to complete the process save a few people.

We continue on with the spam fest numerous times, each time I get close to the final step where all I need to do is Confirm Checkout and then the tickets will be mine. Such was not to be, for Blizzard then decides to do maintenance on the store, and all I get to see is this...


Wonderful.......

This continues into the late hours of the evening, when finally they just say, "No more sales until business time tomorrow, we'll continue to make optimizations."

So, I'm thinking that means 8AM the next day. Of course, knowing Blizzard that could also mean any time from 12AM to 8AM. I then decide it best to sleep in 20-30 minute increments. Yeah, well finally at 12:10FRIGGINPM, the tickets finally come online.
I frantically enter my information and get to the end when...
"Something wrong with my credit card?"
After a few times of re-entering my CVC code, I decide it best to just use another card, which works on the first try (I'll find out why the first one wasn't working a little later).

After only 1 appearance of....


JOHNNY THE FAILURE MURLOC

I finally got my tickets!!! So, some 36 hour vigil I managed to do what I believed to be impossible. The best part was that the tickets were sold out in a matter of minutes. 12k tickets gone with what had to be only 4 hours the store was up.

It didn't really end there. The people that didn't get tickets cried and cried, threatened to sue Blizzard for stealing their time and by preventing them from purchasing tickets. I'm the first person to say that Blizzard really dropped the ball on being prepared, but to cry so much that you file reports with the California Attorney Generals office for business standards because you spent 2 hours trying to get tickets and were disappointed, you need a hobby or something better to occupy your time with. Clearly a video game is not a proper outlet for your angst.

You can read up on what is happening with that on the Warcraft forums, be warned though, there will be excessively juvenile conversations going on regarding the subject. Primarily because the ones that are still complaining are of low intellect....or are 12.

I had made 1 post (I rarely feel the need to post on the forums) in response to a thread that was made after Blizzard decided to hold a lottery for an "extra" 3000 tickets. In about 1 nanosecond the mood on the forums went from angry vigilante mob to a mob of unconditional (perhaps erotically motivated) fanboys. All hailing Blizzard for being so honest and such.
I know for a fact that the same people that are blowing the Blizzard horn again, are the same people that are going to be the first to cry when they don't get a ticket from the lottery, they'll claim that the lottery method was unfair.
In the end, there is no possible way that one can assuage all the negative feelings that were generated from this event. People complain regardless; the best way to handle it is to issue the apology and then stop there, or better yet, NEVER admit fault. Just say sorry to the poor jackoffs that didn't get a ticket.

/endrant

More to come tomorrow. There is much to talk about.