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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBlizzCon tickets: how it went, and what's next
by Mike Schramm 
May 18th 2009 at 5:00PM
Yes, if you were around on Saturday, you know that the first round of BlizzCon tickets sold out, and sold out fast. Tickets went on sale right around 10am PST (which was 1pm EST), and sold out just about 28 minutes later. If the queue numbers are trustworthy, over 21,000 people (we've heard as high as 25,000 at a time) logged in to buy tickets that day, and from unconfirmed reports around the web, it seems like about 5,000 to 8,000 tickets were sold: most people who got in line around number 5,000 were able to pick a ticket up, and that was a few minutes in already. Some of those people are already selling tickets on eBay as well.We believe (though aren't sure) that they'll be selling more than 15,000 tickets this year, since that's what they sold last year and they're using even more of the convention space. If that's true, then Blizzard probably went through only about half of the tickets, and will sell the rest during the second session on the 30th. But that's probably not much of a consolation -- given the frenzy around this last Saturday, there'll probably be more people trying for tickets, and given the prices on eBay, possibly more scalpers clogging up the queue. We'll see.
Update: Lots of people point out, rightly so, that I missed something in my guesstimates of how many tickets were sold: you could purchase up to five. My personal guess is that the majority of people bought only one or two, but even if you go with three as the average, 5,000-8,000 people in the queue is actually 15,000-24,000 tickets. Blizzard probably did sell the majority of tickets on Saturday then, not just half. So the process on May 30th will presumably go even faster.
BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd! We've got all the latest news and information. At BlizzCon you can play the latest games, meet your guildmates, and ask the developers your questions. Plus, there's some great looking costumes.For Blizzard's part, they tell the OC Register that they think it went pretty well -- their PR spokesperson says that from an anecdotal viewpoint, things worked fine. Which is what we see from our side also: while there is plenty of disappointment from people who couldn't get tickets, things went fairly smoothly, and at least it was only a half hour of waiting rather than a few days' worth. The Register also points out, though, that Blizzard never posted about the ticket sales on any of their pages until after the tickets were sold out. Of course we had lots of news (and we'll be covering it closely again on the 30th), but if all you were watching was Blizzard's official pages, you might have missed the whole thing.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Events, Fan stuff, Blizzard, BlizzCon
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
DurBlizz May 18th 2009 9:11PM
And you would think that Blizzard would actually plan to make it an even larger event, given that there are so many people who want to go. The problem isnt the people buying the tickets, it's Blizzard not planning for the total amount of people who want to go. Just look at the numbers and the time it took to sell out. Maybe Blizz will plan something much larger next year so all of us non-mouth-breather bed-wetters can get a chance at a ticket.
greengiant May 18th 2009 9:40PM
This is not true, I was like 5100 in queue and was unable to snag tickets. By the time they were sold out I was @ 3200 in queue, so where are these numbers coming from?
I am going to be pretty upset if I can't get tickets on the 30th.... I have been to the past two Blizzcons and am trying to make a tradition out of it...
Tizzy May 19th 2009 1:16PM
No. No. No.
Who said 5,000 people in line got tickets? T_T
It was around 3,600. If you read the posts and the forums then you would know that people around the 3,000 queue got tickets and some didn't. Where did you get this 5,000-8,000 nonsense?
If you were to go on your guesstimate of 3 tickets then about 10,000 tickets were sold which is about half. Should slowdown when you calculate.
Chuck May 19th 2009 10:15AM
So here's something I just thought of. Lets say that you were a scalper who bought 10 tickets last Saturday.
Whats to stop you from trying to enter the queue NEXT time and scalping again. I posit that even more people will be screwed next time now that the market has been set on Ebay.
ONLY way to avoid this will be for Blizzard to lock out accounts who already have tickets, or to come out with a very strong anti scalping policy in the next few days.
I suspect neither will happen.
1 order of Epic fail coming up, Blizz.
Leslie May 20th 2009 4:55AM
Unless you have multiple mailing addresses, it can't happen like this. It's 5 tickets per MAILING ADDRESS. I suppose if you and your best friends that all live at different addresses all bought 5 tickets to scalp your logic would make sense but Blizz does keep track of the mailing address attached to each account/card.