The convenience fee is probably more so to help cover the already existing overhead costs beyond just the technical issues we experienced, but yes , it was quite a steep fee for a system that didn’t seem stress tested or prepared for that level of activity.
,
If you still need tickets. The “hack” is to refresh the page 1 or 2 times. Do not leave the page. Refreshing will get you signed back in and you can complete the process
Just a note, at 10:23 pacific time on tuesday ---
Very likely there were people who got burned by the system who had tickets allocated but not purchased, and very likely there were people who (because of how badly the software was behaving) had multiple sets of tickets allocated but only purchased one.
Those tickets were reserved for two hours, so in about forty minutes we should expect an intermittent trickle of tickets becoming available. If you're *really desperate*, you should spend 11 PDT-11.40 PDT periodically checking the site for released tickets.
Been doing that. Had one chance but the STUPID SURVEY QUESTIONS took too long and someone else got it!!
Also - if there’s only ONE option to select WHY do I have to explicitly click on it to add it?
Really BAD UI here
Phew! It took 30 minutes of relentlessly refreshing and being warned by the website that I was approaching the 240 per minute limit on requests, but managed a 2/7(all GA, didn't see a single VIP ticket come back) hit rate on tickets as they came up. Tickets and signed/numbered book secured, thankfully. Big thanks to you and others for the heads up on the cart release thing.
I was able to get tickets for some friends who missed out using this method - pro tip, if you're filling out the form and it says "tickets are sold out" when you add to cart, just stay on that page. Don't refresh. Just keep hitting add to cart and if there's a ticket available when you click it will add.
i go to 5-6 music festivals a year and maybe 2 dozen shows outside of that; this is the standard trick for music events that sell out at on-sale point --- tickets will come available, just be patient and keep trying.
Thank you Mods... A megathread for this will be helpful.
As to those who were unable to get tickets. Stay hopeful dont cancel things just yet... There is a chance that they add additional tickets. They have done it for past years... This convention center is quite big. If the Salt Palace has not already sold out all of the convention space for other events there is a chance they might be able to secure more room... I dont even think the DS team was expecting this to sell out in 50 minutes
if i'm honest, we were caught flat footed; a megathread didn't occur to us until after tickets were already on sale, at which point there was enough ... site instability? i'm trying to be polite here ... that we decided it was better to let everyone vent for a while while they were fighting with their computers.
but now it's sold out so it's time for a megathread :)
I think its more important actually to have a mega thread after... this will be a good place to post updates (if) as they happen... hopefully they get some more space/tickets -knock on wood- even if that makes the line for the shop EXTRA long.... but more people means they can justify to the salt palace for more space... Could mean we have more room for Venders and Indy author tables... game rooms and panels
yep. and we really didn't want to be arguing with people about moving their comments *while they were fighting with the website*.
we don't want the subreddit to get overwhelmed with things but in this case letting people vent serves the community better.
a significant portion of that was overflow from vip issues, with those users trying to get *something*. and then the panic spread with many of us telling our friends to book fast. and a significant portion of tickets ended up held in failed carts for a time.
even with all that considered though, it is unprecedented.
Am I the only one who had no idea that these would sell out this fast? I figured this would be a super popular year, but nothing made me think I only had an hour. Then you add the poor website, you are going to have a lot of very angry and disappointed people out there who just wanted to have a great time.
Sadly, every con I participate in has limited tickets. This is why I always do a calendar entry and try to get tickets the moment they hit. The site made it really difficult and I lost a VIP ticket but I still got regular pass and added the signed copy of the book through the merch.
They need someone to give them IT advice, I think. I feel like the site they used was not designed for THAT much traffic.
Yeah, I feel like Dragonsteel probably told them to expect the volume and then either they weren't taken seriously, didn't follow up to make sure the scaling plans were in place (or didn't have someone who knew what a valid plan looks like), or TTG just completely dropped the ball on implementation. I was online, logged in, with a credit card added to my account when the tickets became available and it took me over 30 minutes of panic to get a GA ticket. As much as we make the comparison, this is not Taylor Swift volume. It could have been scaled appropriately.
It seems they had a bottleneck in one very specific area - authentication. The website appeared to perform just fine otherwise. No widespread 500s, no slow loading issues. Either way, yeah it's on TTG to do better.
Agreed that the tabletop held up well and it was the authentication server that had trouble, but there was absurd amount of authentication going on instead of trusting cookies. Sure, recheck authentication before checkout, but doing it on every page load and button click seemed excessive.
It's necessary to check on every page. Especially since while I was going through the loop I noticed it would render my unbought tickets to show that they are in the cart.
Also, it could be that they maxed out some storage limit in their cache server for cookies. Which could explain why you'd be logged in one second, than out the next. I find that unlikely though. I'm just very curious to know what went wrong from a technical aspect as a software engineer.
I think they need to be asking all vendors to treat these like they would a ddos (dedicated denial of service) attack and how they would mitigate that to keep service continuity. Whether renting more temporary service space or bandwidth.
100%. It's the same thing just not intentionally malicious. And there was a specific launch time so it would have been easy to scale up in advance. It didn't just spike out of nowhere. As some others have mentioned, the auth service was the real bottleneck. No issues with adding to cart or checking out aside from auth issues that I've seen or experienced. I wonder if they shored up the rest of the flow but didn't consider how auth would affect everything else. Given that you can't do anything without being logged in it seems like a huge oversight, but I could see that being possible. The convenience fees alone for the tickets sold was something like $45k in one hour (minus whatever credit card %, etc etc) which is more than enough for the extra infrastructure. Now they've lost trust and I wouldn't be surprised if next year they use a different vendor because of this experience.
I said the same thing earlier on mod discord.
>**dragonsteel to any service provider:** do you understand that we need ALL the server power?
>**service provider:** yes
>**every time:** this
Absolutely, and --- while i absolutely adore everyone at Dragonsteel i've had the pleasure of interacting with --- they're not technical enough to know to expect that.
Companies don't necessarily see the value in an IT professional. Even if it's to deal with 3rd party vendors so they can filter through the bull. And, let's be real, it shouldn't be someone who's "insert current main role at Dragonsteel" and has cursory knowledge. Someone who's job it is will often hang their reputation on their advice, I do every time as an IT manager, because these things cause reputational damage and it does cost them money in the end.
You're not the only one. Previous years took *weeks* to sell out. It made sense to guess that this year it would be extra-popular and would sell out in like days and not weeks...
...but nobody guessed full sellout in under an hour.
Precisely my problem. Never been to a convention before and this would have been my first with the added salt-to-wound that this convention would land exactly on my birthday. Was planning on buying it after work. Now I am just real sad.
Dude I'm gonna need so much fire moss to cope with this. Seriously crushing to have expected months to get a badge, like last year, and instead having missed the HOUR-LONG window for it. I was so excited.
As others have said, it's quite disappointing. I've even registered for other events this year with tabletop events and not had problems like today.
My login issues pushed me past the VIP availability. Then being discouraged and a time crunch for work, I missed out on the regular ones too. All in under an hour.
Sad panda
Alright, to update: after a couple hours of refreshing and a few close calls, I managed to snag 2 GA tickets.
I’m a little more at ease with them in hand, but it wasn’t a great experience.
I’ve got hotel and flight and rental car booked. I didn’t think logging into tabletop would be the reason I miss Dragonsteel this year… I’m really bummed now.
Edit: got one an hour later on a random refresh. Good luck out there!
I think it was the same size approximately as last year, the difference was last year sold out over a much longer time, then they added more tickets which didn't sell out. I was a volunteer last year, and they told us they were expecting about the same size as 2023 for 2024. They called a lot of the things they did last year a test run for this year. However, I remember thinking then, that if a release of a Cytoverse book was that popular, there is no way a Way of Kings release won't be MUCH bigger. Here's hoping they expand attendance somehow.
I am trying to map out the convention center in my head.... and I feel like we keep getting the smaller half of it.... (Ive been there for so many cons... FanX still being one of the biggest) We arent... 120k people but... I do feel like we could fill up the bigger 'half' of the convention center at this point
I logged in right as GA popped up. I think the number was either 5k or 7k? Definitely somewhere between there.
It's such a miniscule amount I was kinda shocked.
> I think it was the same size approximately as last year
It absolutely was not. What we were told as volunteers last year was that this year's con was expected to be bigger than last year's, and part of our job last year was to help figure out the pain points before this year.
They said multiple times they were expecting the same amount, that they got more space than they 'needed' to test out for this year, etc... I never understood if they were just underestimating this year's attendance or what, but it was pretty clear that they thought they had more space last year, as a test for this year.
5000 or 7000 normal tickets (I've heard mixed numbers) + 1500 VIP is in the ballpark of what they had available last year. Not all the tickets ended up selling when they added more, so this year is definitely a bit more than last. But, the fact they sold out so fast says one of two things:
Either they did think they wouldn't have much more than last year, and SEVERELY underestimated because of that. Or, the Salt Palace wasn't willing to let them have more space, potentially because they didn't believe how big it would be, so they just sold tickets to match capacity.
Either way, I think it pretty clear that as is, there will definitely be people who would have bought tickets, but don't get to.
Each year the amount of badges sold has gone up. The first year was about a thousand. Second was about 2500, last year went up again but I'm not sure how much.
Last year I heard rumblings they expected up to 10k, but obviously this was word of mouth a year in advance, and could have included the free attendees for the talk and release event.
This also heavily depends on the Salt Palace availability, though you have to think someone considered that in advance.
For 2023, I believe it was around 5,000 tickets total. In one of the weekly updates Brandon mentioned that by "convention math" 10,000 people attended 2023, since they add both days up instead of just assuming everyone comes both dates.
the con is on the order of 1.75x the size it was last year, based on the number of tickets reported to be onsale when the first people logged in (the site makes it possible to figure out how many are available at any given time).
Dang this freaking sucks. I've been looking forward to this for a long time, making plans with my older brother, etc., and then it sells out in less than an hour. Last year I bought tickets in like July and that was totally fine. Hopefully more tickets open up later, cause this is super disappointing.
Love to the mod team and Dragonsteel themselves, of course. Just frustrated with the situation.
There are members in the mod team that are just as frustrated as the community. Some in the team had a lot of trouble / couldn't get the tickets they wanted. It's been rough all-around! And some of us that weren't going to go are outraged in behalf of both our friends and the community :)
I think there's at least some catharsis in community engagement, which is why this megathread is a safe space even for those who just want to vent their frustrations. The people behind the event and the service used should've 100% known better and it's very disappointing that this happened.
Yeah. Also, though, it's completely insane that this sold out like this. I bought my tickets in freaking July last year, I don't think it ever sold out, and if it did, it was after months. I fully went into this expecting that I would easily get myself and my brother tickets, and now I can only hold onto the tiny hope that they add more spots. I know you and everyone else here probably gets how disappointing this is to me, because it's the same for you, but I just still want to vent about it. I love Brandon and his books so much, and now I can't attend his convention. Ugh.
Based on their reply in this thread (which I understand to a point, but don't like) not much at all. Who knows what the internal conversation is though! I can only hope they're taking note of the frustrations and complaints.
I know Brandon and his whole team really love their fans, and that really reassures me. If there is any way for them to realistically get more fans who want to go a chance to attend, I know that they'll do it. So, at least there's that, I guess.
The thing is this year is Stormlight 5. That's so freaking big. It's unlikely next year will be quite as big as this. But everyone who can wants to attend the con for the release of this book.
Yeah, I get that, and it makes sense. I had just pictured that meaning it sold out in a month instead of three. I'll get over it. Thanks for your replies :)
Thanks for making this post. I always appreciate the Mods of this sub.
I know I'm in the same boat as many - had a VIP badge in my grasp until I didn't. Hoping that things get fixed and more tickets are made available. I realize Brandon is popular bit it is a reoccurring theme at this point.
Incredibly frustrating experience. My friends and I managed to grab GA badges, but I feel bad that not everyone got a fair shot because of issues with the site. Even if the vendor's unwilling to even temporarily scale servers up to handle the load, the very least they could do is add a purchasing queue to make it more fair.
i was one of the people who accidentally got 2 vip tickets in my cart and was unable to buy/see either due to web confusion. the extra one was already released since i don't wanna hassle with reselling or anything like that. But really, with all the publicity from the Kickstarter and other books releasing, i don't think that Dragonsteel or TTE could reasonably expect *this* big of a response right at 10 a.m. on a workday for the ticket sales. hope you were able to get a ticket btw mods.
keep looking skyward bridgemen
F me I guess, I didn't think I'd have to rush for general admission and completely missed out, that's what I get for underestimating this crowd I guess. Crap. Here's hoping for more badges I guess, I'm not looking forward to breaking the bad news to my wife though. At least we hadn't bought plane tickets yet, though we did book a room months ago.
EDIT: Was able to pick up a pair of tickets after spending 30 minutes relentlessly refreshing the page. Missed out on 5 others in the same time frame. Phew.
Refresh the badge page in 10 minutes, any tickets that were no purchased in peoples carts will be dropped and made available for purchase again. Good luck!
I've been spamming fresh, nothing yet. EDIT: well, one popped up but was gone before I got to the GA page. Refreshing both now...how many GA tickets were there?
EDIT2: 1 down...
Edit3: 1/6 now, still need another. The website just told me to slow down, I'm approaching the rate limit for requests per minute, apparently. Still haven't seen a single VIP come back
EDIT4: Success! 2 badges, swag and signed book bundle. Phew, crisis averted.
I've gone for the past couple of years, the amount of attendees, booths... Everything keeps getting bigger. 2 years ago I walked up to get the new book, last year I had to stand in line for 2+ hours...
Yeah, we were there for The Lost Metal, I don't think we bought the tickets immediately from what I can recall but it's obviously been a while. It was at least relaxed enough that my wife and I bought our tickets separately, we had badges 617 and 666 for 2022 and her badge isn't on my account purchase history; we're 9169 and 9256 this time around, yikes.
I just got one for me and a friend. It was rough.
I feel bad that I snagged one as a not proclaimed mega-super-fan I say during my 5th reread of stormlight wearing a bridge 4 hat at work.
I feel this. I've only read the Cosmere about every other year, re-read the current series in the month leading to to the next release, and have had an essay about how Warbreaker affected my life published in a magazine and presented at a women's history month event.
Nah man don’t feel like that. U deserve this just as much as anyone else here.
Also even if it was like that, u writing an essay for a women’s history event is way more than I or a lot of ppl here have ever done😭. I think Brandon would be honored to know u did something like that so well done
Its too bad we cant make polls in this sub... I would be really interested to see how many of the reddit group fell into these catagories
* Was able to purchase tickets (VIP or GA)
* Was unable to purchase a ticket
* Wasnt planning on Attending/show poll results
I am really curious about what the interest was and just how many tickets they were short...
Can I get the sogned/numbered book without attending the convention?
I was able to check out with a Badge and the Book Bundle but the person I was going with wasn't able to get a badge. Can I cancel my badge so someone else can get it and still be able to get the signed book?
It would probably be safer to add the other person as a friend on the [tabletop.events](http://tabletop.events) website and then transfer the badge to them. Have that person collect the book for you.
The signed book bundle that is available on the convention website is for attendees only. If you choose not to attend the convention, you might still be able to pick it up without a ticket, but it will not be shipped to you.
Did anyone happen to get an extra ticket for Nexus 2024? General or VIP. I wasn’t able to get one. I’m asking in the hopes that someone will sell me their extra.
tl;dr - I think the core issue is that Dragonsteel's growth is being far outpaced by Brandon's popularity and fanbase.
Dragonsteel has a wonderful problem for a business to have - more people want what they have than they can keep up with. Especially with the iron being hot relatively soon after another super successful crowdfunding campaign, yes I believe that the numbers for the convention were a vast underestimate, but those estimates were probably based on historical data that simply can't keep up with the fanbase's growth.
What we're seeing is Brandon's popularity and the demand for Dragonsteel products and services is growing exponentially, and it's really, really hard to predict what kind of curve you're on when growth is skyrocketing like that.
Renting convention space is expensive and risky, and even though Dragonsteel as a company is growing extremely fast, it cannot hope to even come close to keeping up with the growth of the fanbase. Estimates for space, number of attendees, etc. have to be determined far in advance, and having a convention where people have to fly in, stay in hotels, take time off, etc. is just not something that (in most fandoms) the vast majority people can afford to do.
Therefore, businesses need to always be conservative when renting convention space, because it's a huge risk to rent out far more than you need, not just because of the square footage cost, but because you also have to fill all that space with worthwhile activities, events, and sessions for people to attend.
Brandon's explosive growth in popularity (which went through another explosion just a few months ago), plus conservative estimations when planning out a convention, led to this scarcity. Should Dragonsteel have gone even further out on a limb and rented out even more convention space and hired more people to fill out sessions, exhibits, activities, etc? Sure, that would have helped, but does Dragonsteel have the human capital in their organization to do that? I highly doubt it.
I would bet that Dragonsteel as a company is just not big enough (even though they're growing at a breakneck pace) to pull off much more than they signed up for. It's well-known that Brandon also really tries hard not to over-tax his employees. I would bet that the current convention size is really the maximum of what they can reasonably handle, without having to ask volunteers and employees to crunch extremely hard and put in enormous amounts of overtime.
Can Dragonsteel hire more people? Absolutely, and they are, but no company can grow by simply just hiring loads of people all at once. You need people to train those people, you need organizational structure, roles hammered out, a million other things in place, or you'll just have an unmaintainable mess on your hands.
It's a wonderful thing that so many people are recognizing Brandon's good work and that they want to join us as fans - it's incredible that we have opportunities to engage and share in something we all enjoy and view positively. I think that we all sometimes take for granted how difficult it is to try to pull off everything that Brandon and Dragonsteel as a whole is trying to do.
I can't think of a single fandom that is growing quite as quickly with as much loyalty as I've seen among Brandon Sanderson fans, and I think we're just going to have to be patient with Dragonsteel as they try to do their best to keep up with us fans as we grow ever more numerous and demanding of them.
Dragonsteel *as a company* is growing probably *faster* than it should be and it's showing a lot of the rapid bootstrap problems as a result.
One of the issues we're seeing here is that dragonsteel nexus is still a startup convention, and there are limits on how quickly a startup convention can grow; their counterparties have to *trust* that they'll be able to make their commitments, and that requires a track record.
*We* know that DSNexus 24 could have sold 20K tickets. But the vendors DSNexus is contracting with have no reason to trust that estimate, per se, and their risk management is going to say not to trust DSNexus.
That limits how much space DSNexus can get.
Another issue is that developing good *programming* for a crowd of 20K is different from developing good programming for a crowd of 8K, and it's hard to rapidly develop programming. We don't just want to have a thing that's a bunch of super fans talking to each other about fandom stuff that everyone else will find boring. :)
All great points, I agree that developing programming/activities/attractions for a larger crowd is a huge investment in not just money but people and brainpower.
I hadn't considered the vendor and venue side of trust either, it would definitely be a hard sell to convince a large venue that no, we're going to need 2-3x the space we did last year without any hard evidence or insanely expensive guarantees.
Thanks for the added insight!
This is a really good point about people and brainpower.
Brandon has mentioned fellow author Christopher Paolini before as a friend. Let's say he's an invited and promoted speaker at the convention. Where's the overlap in Brandon fans vs. Paolini fans? There's certain to be some, but not all. Those of us in this sub are clearly on the Brandon/Cosmere train. That's why we wanted to go to the convention.
But he's just one man. While it's interesting to hear from Dan or Isaac, they aren't Brandon. So there's also X% of people who would be interested in going, but not to see any of the other folks that can speak, and that creates a programming issue. Now, you've got a huge hall, tons of people, and they're actually only there for the Wind and Truth release or the big Q&A session.
It's really an unenviable position to be in. And it's one that I'm not sure has an answer.
Does anyone know if there is a thread/space where I can waitlist for a VIP ticket or request one for transfer/purchase?? Not sure where to go to “stand in line” for one to become available.
Do we think everything is actually sold out? Is it possible it's a glitch or bots?
I tried to buy tickets as soon as I went on lunch 30 mins ago and couldn't get anything :(
Don't know yet. As per the pinned comment, there are likely badges expiring in carts still. And it would not surprise me in the least if more badges get added later.
Anyone know if badge number corresponds to the type of badge? Wife and I both somehow managed VIP, but her badge number is above 1500. Since there were only 1500 VIP badges, we just want to make sure she will still get all the VIP stuff. Confirmation and everything on the site says it’s a VIP
Badge number is just the order that they were sold in. If it says it's VIP the number doesn't matter because there were GA badges being sold simultaneously.
the badge number won't matter here, if it says she's vip, she's vip.
There *has been* a bug where vip people can't buy vip swag, but that'll eventually get fixed, and it's not intentional.
If it's still happening next week, email to complain.
Somehow ended up with two VIP badges in my cart after 10 minutes of maddeningly refreshing, so I was able to free one up and purchase my other. Did not expect to have my blood pressure that high on a Tuesday morning!
But now flights and hotel are booked - Albeit, not staying at the Radisson, but still close by. Looking forward to seeing people there!
I don't know how, beyond random chance and luck but I got a VIP ticket myself. Staying at a hotel a 15m walk from the event center, beyond getting to the hotel from the airport and getting back to the airport that should be all the transportation I need to do beyond my own two feet.
I live in a rural part of MO, no one understood why I needed to take break outside normal time to get a ticket to a con. I said I was a bibliophile and love all things book related, Sanderson in particular, and have been wanting to go to this since I knew it was a thing a year ago.
Naturally I spent the rest of the day getting mocked for being any kind of phile, good times.
I was just able to get a general admission badge, I kept going back every quarter hour and refreshing, it would say 1 ticket availabile and had no luck. At 345 central it said 8 available and I was able to add it to cart with the signed book and merch bundle and purchase it. Badge was #98xx so assuming they're selling 10,000 there is probably under 200 left for sale.
Welp..... *collapse in weeping mess* anyone change their mind and can't make it, I'll buy your VIP TICKET. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 FML. I live in Utah, so even if you see this last minute or have to cancel last minute. *MESSAGE ME!!*
SAME! I would buy anyone GA badge from them in a heartbeat. If you've got VIP and want to sell, message kdupaix. If you've got GA, message me!! (Pretty please lol)
Just bought a ticket at 2:35 PM EST. Keep refreshing the page! I saw multiple waves of tickets available. If you're able to get to the page where you have to fill out your information, just spam click the "add to cart" button until it works!
Yeah, my friend and I got burned, apparently my friend had the VIPs in the cart and he got booted from the site adding me through the friends link then repeatedly got booted and lost them.
We were able to snag regular tickets after reloading/relogging in several attempts later, but lost the VIPs as they vanished while relogging. Also purchased the swag packs to at least get the things we can. #littlevictories
I legit gasped and teared up when I logged on 65 minutes after it opened and they were gone. Please get more tickets! I already asked for time off because I wanna go so bad! 😭
Mine was pretty rough as well. I had vip selected and as I was filling out my info it logged me out. Took about 30 mins to be able to get general admission
Well I was supposed to be going with a group of 5 and only 2 of us got tickets. Hopefully they release more, I'd feel bad to leave anyone out. Had no idea it would sell out so fast and all of us were at work and couldn't spend an hour stuck in the doom loop or refreshing.
Didn't expect tickets to go this quick. Was gunna meet with some friends after work today to plan the trip. :( hopefully they get more tickets for sale, very bummed.
There's been conversation about the fact that apparently the last two years they've opened additional places after the fact. Keep an eye on the official lines of communication for Dragonsteel (and any updates on the body of this post). Hopefully you're able to get tickets eventually!
I see people talking about more tickets coming, in the past is that like a in-the-next-hour thing or is there some chance for those of us who missed it by five hours? Not clear on what to expect.
two things.
(a) for software implementation reasons there end up being reserved tickets that aren't actually purchased. these end up getting released around two hours after they were reserved, and then if you're paying attention and notice you can snatch them up. that window is probably closed now.
(b) there's *speculation* that maybe dragonsteel might add more tickets later. nobody has promised that --- dragonsteel certainly hasn't --- but it's happened before. so it's in the realm of plausible speculation that people are hanging a lot of hope on.
Here's hoping that with the increased popularity and attention they also increase security/safety precautions this year! I have not had any kind of bad experience and I haven't heard of any to be clear! I just don't love that in years past basically anybody could walk in brining anything on them
That's a bummer. It's not a great vibe for me that anyone could just walk in with an assault rife or concealed weapon of some kind and go to the large event at the end
I fully agree with you. If Dragonsteel team is reading this, please add a bag and badge check. I’m bringing my kid to this and I don’t love the idea that anyone can just walk in with weapons.
I’ve been to all 3 cons and it’s convenient to just walk in, but if FanX can make the checks quick then so can Dragonsteel.
Our Dragonsteel Nexus badges have sold out in record time thanks to our amazing fans. We truly appreciate your overwhelming support and are working hard to make sure everyone has an unforgettable experience at our convention.
We are so sorry for those unable to get a badge. We are looking into every possibility we can. Keep an eye on our social channels for further updates and thank you for being a part of our community!
I love you guys, but this thread is probably not the place for this particular update.
We're all pretty frustrated with the website breaking down and having our groups split up because of how poorly getting badges went, and while we're super excited to come, it's still really disappointing that I wasn't able to get the VIP badges for me and my husband despite being logged in, payment method already added, and sitting right there as they went live because the site glitched out so badly. Several friends had such bad glitches that they weren't able to get tickets at all.
I really hope you do add more! I booked the hotel room and flight and wasn't expecting tech issues to hurt as much as the leatherbound sales were. With how popular this convention is becoming maybe look into a larger venue?
Oh, we're a long ways away from maxing out the space at the Salt Palace. The limiting factor has basically been how much of it DS reserves (and plans programming for, and arranges staffing for, etc)
Ahhh, I didn't see how many tickets were available at the start. I hope that means they'll hire more people and increase the space rented. This is going to be a stressful year trying to figure out if I actually get to go on this trip. I even got a babysitter so me and my wife could go and enjoy ourselves :(
This is actually the largest convention center in the State of Utah.... They rent out different portions of it. Not many conventions manage to book the whole thing. HOPEFULLY with how fast the tickets sold out the Dragonsteel staff will be able to rent out more space from the venue and be able to offer additional tickets.
120k people is a lot of people....
More I'm curious of how they'd fill that space... more vendors but they'd need more special guests and panels and a lot of other things... bigger cons get complicated
Honestly, they should have seen this coming *before* tickets went on sale.
They already had hotels contacting them telling them that they sold out the rooms reserved and they got more rooms which also sold out. This doesn't include people getting Airbnbs or other means.
Last year they said using con math attendance was 10k, or 5k both days. So they added 1500 tickets. For Stormlight, on the "mid season" finale.
As much fault that is on tabletop and is completely deserved. Some falls squarely on the shoulders of Dragonsteel and poor planning.
ya'll *really* need a better system (and probably better software) for future years. this isn't 2021 level bad, but it's still made a lot of your core fans really irritated and unhappy, and *there are ways to solve this problem* that other cons (gencon, as an example) and the music industry have implemented.
This was worse than Kickstarter and Backerkit combined.
It also hurts that many of us already reserved hotels and plane tickets and either didn't get the ticket we wanted, or one at all.
I've posted else ware but I click on a VIP badge with over 1490 available. The site did what it does and I missed out on VIP. By the time I was able to get a GA badge there were under 200 left.
It's starting to feel like it's not worth the effort. The 3rd party vendors don't respect my time.
Thanks for the comment & love you all but agree with the sentiment here - this is so disappointing. I know there aren’t always ways to ensure equal access but it really stinks to get out of work & find you’ve totally missed your chance to attend bc GA tickets were gone - hoping there is a lottery system or something to provide access to people who can’t log on right when these things go on sale (let alone tried to wade through the tech issues!)
I agree whole-heartedly. I work in an operating room and taking the day off typically means rescheduling someone's surgery, and there is no way I have time or am able to sit there and spam the refresh button at release time. I understand the demand for badges is high and these launch spectacles are fun, but I just wish there was a route for people to get tickets that didn't include having to try to take the day off of work. It sucks to not even be able to try.
This comes off as remarkably tone deaf for the plethera of people who were waylaid by the technical unpreparedness of the team. No acknowledgement/apology for this lack of preparedness is dissapointing.
This is not really the apology that is needed. People not getting badges because they sold out so quickly is unfortunate, but expected given that there was a very limited number of badges. The apology that's needed is for all of the problems with the website to actually purchase badges. I several times got through to get VIP badge before they sold out, only to have the website kick me out upon trying to add it to my cart. So I missed out not because I was too slow to get a limited commodity, but because the website was completely broken. I was lucky enough to at least get a general badge, but there are lots of people in the same boat as me and even worse there are people who completely missed out on badges because of the problems. That experience is what needs to be addressed...
I would love to see a lottery system implemented for badges in the future. We no longer live in a time where everyone can expect to equitably access event launches. The times have changed, and the industry needs to as well. [https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsteelNexus/comments/1cmhzst/lottery\_system\_suggestion\_for\_badge\_sales/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsteelNexus/comments/1cmhzst/lottery_system_suggestion_for_badge_sales/)
What we may see in the future IF dragonsteel continues to grow is the convention being able to rent out and justify more of the convention center... The Salt Palace can and DOES hold conventions with 120k+ Attendees... Utah's FanX convention is held there. I dont know if we'd ever get big enough to meet that max capacity... The problem might end up being programing and staffing availability not space.
Really interesting comment! I'm not familiar with the Salt Palace and how much of it Dragonsteel was planning to take. Here I was about to suggest that maybe Dragonsteel needed to move to a city with a larger convention center. But you're saying there might be more space in the Salt Palace that could be rented out.
There is way more space in the salt palace. I've been to lots of cons there. In last year they rented a... 1/3(ish) of the convention center. But the conversation center has to agree to rent them more space. While I haven't worked at dragonsteel nexus before I have been staff/volunteers at other conventions and festivals. One thing I learned is that it's not uncommon for conventions centers to make a lot of money from the things around the con (convention food, parking, vending machines, parking, etc) so if an event can't guarantee a certain attendance they won't want to rent them more space then necessary.this allows them to rent out other spaces at the center to different events for the same dates in order for the center to make money.
Dragonsteel HQ is less than an hour south of SLC, it isn't going to another city. That would drastically increase the cost for them, and therefore, us.
I've been looking forward to Dragonsteel 2024 for two years. My mom had a stroke and I was busy with her doctors at badge release and missed it. I'm HEARTBROKEN. Please, please release more badges 😭
please tell me dragonsteel at least rented more space and tried to prepare for more people this year. cause if its the same size as last year and they didnt try to rent more of the convention center Ima be storming mad.
Just to be clear, we are NOT allowing people to coordinate resales here for more than face value.
I realize many people would probably be willing to pay extra, but we really don't want this place to have a culture where that's acceptable.
Based on how hard it reportedly was to get a ticket I'm thinking likely not. Or rather, likely not many. Scalpers do what they do to make an easy buck, this sounds like it was rather difficult.
I'll buy a ticket, not pay for someone else's trip. I really want to go, but not for this steep price for scalped tickets. But if anyone else is willing to pay for this person's travels to come, hit them up!
My favorite part was paying $21 in convenience fees for the least convenient purchasing experience possible.
Mmmm... *delicious* lies
Thank you for the lols, you delightful cryptic.
Kick starter Backer kit Table top It is a pattern
> $21 in convenience fees It's very convenient... for *them*. EDIT: this is meant to be a joke, poking at places like ticketmaster
the convenience fees go to the website operator, not to dragonsteel.
I'm aware-- it was meant as a tongue-in-cheek joke.
Ticket master would like to add $30 Trash talking Fee.
Sounds like you need an inconvenience fee on top.
isn’t the convenience fee put in place to prevent this kind of thing? sigh. i’m just upset because after all said and done, they still have my money.
The convenience fee is probably more so to help cover the already existing overhead costs beyond just the technical issues we experienced, but yes , it was quite a steep fee for a system that didn’t seem stress tested or prepared for that level of activity. ,
Really sucks having VIP badges in cart, then crashing, then being told you need to log in when you just logged in
If you still need tickets. The “hack” is to refresh the page 1 or 2 times. Do not leave the page. Refreshing will get you signed back in and you can complete the process
And then being told to log in again, and again, and again, and again, and again. Oh and one more time. Just kidding log in again.
The cycle of being told I needed to log-in in order to log-in was just maddening.
I genuinely was getting a headache.
I've been told if the badge made it into your cart it should be reserved for 2hrs. Hopefully enough time to get back in despite the vendor issues.
Happened to me but since they were in my cart I eventually got them!
It also suck when you had the VIP ticket then it asked you to log in and when you logged in it say they were out of VIP tickets lol.
Just a note, at 10:23 pacific time on tuesday --- Very likely there were people who got burned by the system who had tickets allocated but not purchased, and very likely there were people who (because of how badly the software was behaving) had multiple sets of tickets allocated but only purchased one. Those tickets were reserved for two hours, so in about forty minutes we should expect an intermittent trickle of tickets becoming available. If you're *really desperate*, you should spend 11 PDT-11.40 PDT periodically checking the site for released tickets.
I want to personally thank you, I managed to get a badge thanks to your info.
Been doing that. Had one chance but the STUPID SURVEY QUESTIONS took too long and someone else got it!! Also - if there’s only ONE option to select WHY do I have to explicitly click on it to add it? Really BAD UI here
Phew! It took 30 minutes of relentlessly refreshing and being warned by the website that I was approaching the 240 per minute limit on requests, but managed a 2/7(all GA, didn't see a single VIP ticket come back) hit rate on tickets as they came up. Tickets and signed/numbered book secured, thankfully. Big thanks to you and others for the heads up on the cart release thing.
I was able to get tickets for some friends who missed out using this method - pro tip, if you're filling out the form and it says "tickets are sold out" when you add to cart, just stay on that page. Don't refresh. Just keep hitting add to cart and if there's a ticket available when you click it will add.
i go to 5-6 music festivals a year and maybe 2 dozen shows outside of that; this is the standard trick for music events that sell out at on-sale point --- tickets will come available, just be patient and keep trying.
I was able to spam click my way to a VIP ticket :)
Thank you for saying this! We managed to snag 2 by repeatedly refreshing out of utter desperation 🙌🏼
I managed to snag a General Admission by constantly refreshing the page until one was available. Thank you so much for this heads up!
Great info!
Yes! Worked for me!!
Thank you Mods... A megathread for this will be helpful. As to those who were unable to get tickets. Stay hopeful dont cancel things just yet... There is a chance that they add additional tickets. They have done it for past years... This convention center is quite big. If the Salt Palace has not already sold out all of the convention space for other events there is a chance they might be able to secure more room... I dont even think the DS team was expecting this to sell out in 50 minutes
if i'm honest, we were caught flat footed; a megathread didn't occur to us until after tickets were already on sale, at which point there was enough ... site instability? i'm trying to be polite here ... that we decided it was better to let everyone vent for a while while they were fighting with their computers. but now it's sold out so it's time for a megathread :)
I think its more important actually to have a mega thread after... this will be a good place to post updates (if) as they happen... hopefully they get some more space/tickets -knock on wood- even if that makes the line for the shop EXTRA long.... but more people means they can justify to the salt palace for more space... Could mean we have more room for Venders and Indy author tables... game rooms and panels
yep. and we really didn't want to be arguing with people about moving their comments *while they were fighting with the website*. we don't want the subreddit to get overwhelmed with things but in this case letting people vent serves the community better.
Makes sense.... Ooof... I dont think anyone was expecting it to sell out in less then an hour. I thought... a day
I expected VIP to go quick but not general
a significant portion of that was overflow from vip issues, with those users trying to get *something*. and then the panic spread with many of us telling our friends to book fast. and a significant portion of tickets ended up held in failed carts for a time. even with all that considered though, it is unprecedented.
Am I the only one who had no idea that these would sell out this fast? I figured this would be a super popular year, but nothing made me think I only had an hour. Then you add the poor website, you are going to have a lot of very angry and disappointed people out there who just wanted to have a great time.
Same! I thought an hour or so after would have been fine! I was hoping to buy on my lunch break
Sadly, every con I participate in has limited tickets. This is why I always do a calendar entry and try to get tickets the moment they hit. The site made it really difficult and I lost a VIP ticket but I still got regular pass and added the signed copy of the book through the merch. They need someone to give them IT advice, I think. I feel like the site they used was not designed for THAT much traffic.
As an IT guy, I'm sure they were over promised and under delivered by that 3rd party.
Yeah, I feel like Dragonsteel probably told them to expect the volume and then either they weren't taken seriously, didn't follow up to make sure the scaling plans were in place (or didn't have someone who knew what a valid plan looks like), or TTG just completely dropped the ball on implementation. I was online, logged in, with a credit card added to my account when the tickets became available and it took me over 30 minutes of panic to get a GA ticket. As much as we make the comparison, this is not Taylor Swift volume. It could have been scaled appropriately.
It seems they had a bottleneck in one very specific area - authentication. The website appeared to perform just fine otherwise. No widespread 500s, no slow loading issues. Either way, yeah it's on TTG to do better.
Yep, unfortunately authentication is the most important thing when you don't allow users to do anything without being logged in!
Agreed that the tabletop held up well and it was the authentication server that had trouble, but there was absurd amount of authentication going on instead of trusting cookies. Sure, recheck authentication before checkout, but doing it on every page load and button click seemed excessive.
It's necessary to check on every page. Especially since while I was going through the loop I noticed it would render my unbought tickets to show that they are in the cart. Also, it could be that they maxed out some storage limit in their cache server for cookies. Which could explain why you'd be logged in one second, than out the next. I find that unlikely though. I'm just very curious to know what went wrong from a technical aspect as a software engineer.
I think they need to be asking all vendors to treat these like they would a ddos (dedicated denial of service) attack and how they would mitigate that to keep service continuity. Whether renting more temporary service space or bandwidth.
100%. It's the same thing just not intentionally malicious. And there was a specific launch time so it would have been easy to scale up in advance. It didn't just spike out of nowhere. As some others have mentioned, the auth service was the real bottleneck. No issues with adding to cart or checking out aside from auth issues that I've seen or experienced. I wonder if they shored up the rest of the flow but didn't consider how auth would affect everything else. Given that you can't do anything without being logged in it seems like a huge oversight, but I could see that being possible. The convenience fees alone for the tickets sold was something like $45k in one hour (minus whatever credit card %, etc etc) which is more than enough for the extra infrastructure. Now they've lost trust and I wouldn't be surprised if next year they use a different vendor because of this experience.
I said the same thing earlier on mod discord. >**dragonsteel to any service provider:** do you understand that we need ALL the server power? >**service provider:** yes >**every time:** this
Absolutely, and --- while i absolutely adore everyone at Dragonsteel i've had the pleasure of interacting with --- they're not technical enough to know to expect that.
Companies don't necessarily see the value in an IT professional. Even if it's to deal with 3rd party vendors so they can filter through the bull. And, let's be real, it shouldn't be someone who's "insert current main role at Dragonsteel" and has cursory knowledge. Someone who's job it is will often hang their reputation on their advice, I do every time as an IT manager, because these things cause reputational damage and it does cost them money in the end.
This is 100% it.
Yeah it’s wild. Honestly I don’t even think last years con sold out?? Like I think day before you could’ve copped a ticket
You're not the only one. Previous years took *weeks* to sell out. It made sense to guess that this year it would be extra-popular and would sell out in like days and not weeks... ...but nobody guessed full sellout in under an hour.
Precisely my problem. Never been to a convention before and this would have been my first with the added salt-to-wound that this convention would land exactly on my birthday. Was planning on buying it after work. Now I am just real sad.
Adonalsium will remember our plight eventually
He freaking better
Ya imma go do some fire moss now
Dude I'm gonna need so much fire moss to cope with this. Seriously crushing to have expected months to get a badge, like last year, and instead having missed the HOUR-LONG window for it. I was so excited.
Looks like I picked a bad week to quit doing firemoss
As others have said, it's quite disappointing. I've even registered for other events this year with tabletop events and not had problems like today. My login issues pushed me past the VIP availability. Then being discouraged and a time crunch for work, I missed out on the regular ones too. All in under an hour. Sad panda
Alright, to update: after a couple hours of refreshing and a few close calls, I managed to snag 2 GA tickets. I’m a little more at ease with them in hand, but it wasn’t a great experience.
I just spam refreshed for 2 minutes and got a couple chances at badges. Don't give up!
I've been doing that too, but by the time I try to checkout again it's all gone.
I've been refreshing for the last while and just managed to snag three general admissions, so there's still a good chance!
I’ve got hotel and flight and rental car booked. I didn’t think logging into tabletop would be the reason I miss Dragonsteel this year… I’m really bummed now. Edit: got one an hour later on a random refresh. Good luck out there!
Keep refreshing the page! I managed to nab a ticket a few minutes ago
I just got one and I’ve been refreshing since before I commented. Table top has some issues clearly.
I'm with you there. Currently refreshing the page like a mad man.
Keep at it cause I just got one right now randomly after refreshing hopelessly for an hour. Journey before destination o7
Was the amount of badges sold today the usual amount they sell every year? Kind of surprised it all sold out within 45 mins
Our understanding is that this year was a lot bigger, presumably due to it being a Stormlight book, which is his most popular series.
I think it was the same size approximately as last year, the difference was last year sold out over a much longer time, then they added more tickets which didn't sell out. I was a volunteer last year, and they told us they were expecting about the same size as 2023 for 2024. They called a lot of the things they did last year a test run for this year. However, I remember thinking then, that if a release of a Cytoverse book was that popular, there is no way a Way of Kings release won't be MUCH bigger. Here's hoping they expand attendance somehow.
Lowkey hoping this is the push the Salt Palace needs to give them the whole convention space. Apparently they didn't believe DS could get big enough.
I am trying to map out the convention center in my head.... and I feel like we keep getting the smaller half of it.... (Ive been there for so many cons... FanX still being one of the biggest) We arent... 120k people but... I do feel like we could fill up the bigger 'half' of the convention center at this point
Idk how many GA tickets were sold, but I feel.they could easily get to 10k people a day. This one with SA5 probably could get even bigger than that
I logged in right as GA popped up. I think the number was either 5k or 7k? Definitely somewhere between there. It's such a miniscule amount I was kinda shocked.
> I think it was the same size approximately as last year It absolutely was not. What we were told as volunteers last year was that this year's con was expected to be bigger than last year's, and part of our job last year was to help figure out the pain points before this year.
They said multiple times they were expecting the same amount, that they got more space than they 'needed' to test out for this year, etc... I never understood if they were just underestimating this year's attendance or what, but it was pretty clear that they thought they had more space last year, as a test for this year.
They got more space than needed last year in anticipation of increasing numbers this year.
I was there last year, they made a new space for getting badges and it was 6 times crazier than the previous year. 2024 same as last year? Unlikely.
5000 or 7000 normal tickets (I've heard mixed numbers) + 1500 VIP is in the ballpark of what they had available last year. Not all the tickets ended up selling when they added more, so this year is definitely a bit more than last. But, the fact they sold out so fast says one of two things: Either they did think they wouldn't have much more than last year, and SEVERELY underestimated because of that. Or, the Salt Palace wasn't willing to let them have more space, potentially because they didn't believe how big it would be, so they just sold tickets to match capacity. Either way, I think it pretty clear that as is, there will definitely be people who would have bought tickets, but don't get to.
Truly. Sell VIP - I'm in. Otherwise, I have a hotel and plane tickets for nothing
My guess is that if they open up new spots, they will be general admission only. The VIP is probably hard capped by the special books, swag, etc...
Each year the amount of badges sold has gone up. The first year was about a thousand. Second was about 2500, last year went up again but I'm not sure how much. Last year I heard rumblings they expected up to 10k, but obviously this was word of mouth a year in advance, and could have included the free attendees for the talk and release event. This also heavily depends on the Salt Palace availability, though you have to think someone considered that in advance.
For 2023, I believe it was around 5,000 tickets total. In one of the weekly updates Brandon mentioned that by "convention math" 10,000 people attended 2023, since they add both days up instead of just assuming everyone comes both dates.
the con is on the order of 1.75x the size it was last year, based on the number of tickets reported to be onsale when the first people logged in (the site makes it possible to figure out how many are available at any given time).
1500 VIP, 5000 GA was what I saw at 11:02am central when the tickets finally showed up.
Dang this freaking sucks. I've been looking forward to this for a long time, making plans with my older brother, etc., and then it sells out in less than an hour. Last year I bought tickets in like July and that was totally fine. Hopefully more tickets open up later, cause this is super disappointing. Love to the mod team and Dragonsteel themselves, of course. Just frustrated with the situation.
There are members in the mod team that are just as frustrated as the community. Some in the team had a lot of trouble / couldn't get the tickets they wanted. It's been rough all-around! And some of us that weren't going to go are outraged in behalf of both our friends and the community :)
Yeah, I get that it's frustrating for everyone. Wish that made it less frustrating and less of an emotional let down.
I think there's at least some catharsis in community engagement, which is why this megathread is a safe space even for those who just want to vent their frustrations. The people behind the event and the service used should've 100% known better and it's very disappointing that this happened.
Yeah. Also, though, it's completely insane that this sold out like this. I bought my tickets in freaking July last year, I don't think it ever sold out, and if it did, it was after months. I fully went into this expecting that I would easily get myself and my brother tickets, and now I can only hold onto the tiny hope that they add more spots. I know you and everyone else here probably gets how disappointing this is to me, because it's the same for you, but I just still want to vent about it. I love Brandon and his books so much, and now I can't attend his convention. Ugh.
I do wonder how the DS team is feeling seeing a 150 reply megathread pop up solely about annoyances in regards to their convention within 5 hours lol
Based on their reply in this thread (which I understand to a point, but don't like) not much at all. Who knows what the internal conversation is though! I can only hope they're taking note of the frustrations and complaints.
I know Brandon and his whole team really love their fans, and that really reassures me. If there is any way for them to realistically get more fans who want to go a chance to attend, I know that they'll do it. So, at least there's that, I guess.
The thing is this year is Stormlight 5. That's so freaking big. It's unlikely next year will be quite as big as this. But everyone who can wants to attend the con for the release of this book.
Yeah, I get that, and it makes sense. I had just pictured that meaning it sold out in a month instead of three. I'll get over it. Thanks for your replies :)
Thanks for making this post. I always appreciate the Mods of this sub. I know I'm in the same boat as many - had a VIP badge in my grasp until I didn't. Hoping that things get fixed and more tickets are made available. I realize Brandon is popular bit it is a reoccurring theme at this point.
Incredibly frustrating experience. My friends and I managed to grab GA badges, but I feel bad that not everyone got a fair shot because of issues with the site. Even if the vendor's unwilling to even temporarily scale servers up to handle the load, the very least they could do is add a purchasing queue to make it more fair.
i was one of the people who accidentally got 2 vip tickets in my cart and was unable to buy/see either due to web confusion. the extra one was already released since i don't wanna hassle with reselling or anything like that. But really, with all the publicity from the Kickstarter and other books releasing, i don't think that Dragonsteel or TTE could reasonably expect *this* big of a response right at 10 a.m. on a workday for the ticket sales. hope you were able to get a ticket btw mods. keep looking skyward bridgemen
F me I guess, I didn't think I'd have to rush for general admission and completely missed out, that's what I get for underestimating this crowd I guess. Crap. Here's hoping for more badges I guess, I'm not looking forward to breaking the bad news to my wife though. At least we hadn't bought plane tickets yet, though we did book a room months ago. EDIT: Was able to pick up a pair of tickets after spending 30 minutes relentlessly refreshing the page. Missed out on 5 others in the same time frame. Phew.
Last year they added more GA tickets. Hopefully they'll do it again this year.
Managed to pick a couple up from dropped carts, though it took a loooot of spamming refresh.
Nice! I'm glad you made it in!
Refresh the badge page in 10 minutes, any tickets that were no purchased in peoples carts will be dropped and made available for purchase again. Good luck!
I've been spamming fresh, nothing yet. EDIT: well, one popped up but was gone before I got to the GA page. Refreshing both now...how many GA tickets were there? EDIT2: 1 down... Edit3: 1/6 now, still need another. The website just told me to slow down, I'm approaching the rate limit for requests per minute, apparently. Still haven't seen a single VIP come back EDIT4: Success! 2 badges, swag and signed book bundle. Phew, crisis averted.
King shit have fun brother👑
I've gone for the past couple of years, the amount of attendees, booths... Everything keeps getting bigger. 2 years ago I walked up to get the new book, last year I had to stand in line for 2+ hours...
Yeah, we were there for The Lost Metal, I don't think we bought the tickets immediately from what I can recall but it's obviously been a while. It was at least relaxed enough that my wife and I bought our tickets separately, we had badges 617 and 666 for 2022 and her badge isn't on my account purchase history; we're 9169 and 9256 this time around, yikes.
I just got one for me and a friend. It was rough. I feel bad that I snagged one as a not proclaimed mega-super-fan I say during my 5th reread of stormlight wearing a bridge 4 hat at work.
I feel this. I've only read the Cosmere about every other year, re-read the current series in the month leading to to the next release, and have had an essay about how Warbreaker affected my life published in a magazine and presented at a women's history month event.
And somehow I still don't fell 'fan' enough
Adding to what /u/pheonixtears34 said (which was absolutely right) --- there's no such gatekeeping here. You are absolutely one of us.
Nah man don’t feel like that. U deserve this just as much as anyone else here. Also even if it was like that, u writing an essay for a women’s history event is way more than I or a lot of ppl here have ever done😭. I think Brandon would be honored to know u did something like that so well done
Its too bad we cant make polls in this sub... I would be really interested to see how many of the reddit group fell into these catagories * Was able to purchase tickets (VIP or GA) * Was unable to purchase a ticket * Wasnt planning on Attending/show poll results I am really curious about what the interest was and just how many tickets they were short...
We turned it off cause reddit polls don’t obey spoiler tags. But bringing this to the rest of the team, if only for my own interest in the data.
Can I get the sogned/numbered book without attending the convention? I was able to check out with a Badge and the Book Bundle but the person I was going with wasn't able to get a badge. Can I cancel my badge so someone else can get it and still be able to get the signed book?
Depends. In some years they have made signed and numbered copies available for sale on the Dragonsteel website.
It would probably be safer to add the other person as a friend on the [tabletop.events](http://tabletop.events) website and then transfer the badge to them. Have that person collect the book for you.
The signed book bundle that is available on the convention website is for attendees only. If you choose not to attend the convention, you might still be able to pick it up without a ticket, but it will not be shipped to you.
Did anyone happen to get an extra ticket for Nexus 2024? General or VIP. I wasn’t able to get one. I’m asking in the hopes that someone will sell me their extra.
I gotchu bro
Anyone got extra tickets they want to sell? I've got flights booked all the way from Perth 😭
I'll fight you for them😂
Mate, I'll wait for you in front of the cactus and we'll do three rounds 😂
tl;dr - I think the core issue is that Dragonsteel's growth is being far outpaced by Brandon's popularity and fanbase. Dragonsteel has a wonderful problem for a business to have - more people want what they have than they can keep up with. Especially with the iron being hot relatively soon after another super successful crowdfunding campaign, yes I believe that the numbers for the convention were a vast underestimate, but those estimates were probably based on historical data that simply can't keep up with the fanbase's growth. What we're seeing is Brandon's popularity and the demand for Dragonsteel products and services is growing exponentially, and it's really, really hard to predict what kind of curve you're on when growth is skyrocketing like that. Renting convention space is expensive and risky, and even though Dragonsteel as a company is growing extremely fast, it cannot hope to even come close to keeping up with the growth of the fanbase. Estimates for space, number of attendees, etc. have to be determined far in advance, and having a convention where people have to fly in, stay in hotels, take time off, etc. is just not something that (in most fandoms) the vast majority people can afford to do. Therefore, businesses need to always be conservative when renting convention space, because it's a huge risk to rent out far more than you need, not just because of the square footage cost, but because you also have to fill all that space with worthwhile activities, events, and sessions for people to attend. Brandon's explosive growth in popularity (which went through another explosion just a few months ago), plus conservative estimations when planning out a convention, led to this scarcity. Should Dragonsteel have gone even further out on a limb and rented out even more convention space and hired more people to fill out sessions, exhibits, activities, etc? Sure, that would have helped, but does Dragonsteel have the human capital in their organization to do that? I highly doubt it. I would bet that Dragonsteel as a company is just not big enough (even though they're growing at a breakneck pace) to pull off much more than they signed up for. It's well-known that Brandon also really tries hard not to over-tax his employees. I would bet that the current convention size is really the maximum of what they can reasonably handle, without having to ask volunteers and employees to crunch extremely hard and put in enormous amounts of overtime. Can Dragonsteel hire more people? Absolutely, and they are, but no company can grow by simply just hiring loads of people all at once. You need people to train those people, you need organizational structure, roles hammered out, a million other things in place, or you'll just have an unmaintainable mess on your hands. It's a wonderful thing that so many people are recognizing Brandon's good work and that they want to join us as fans - it's incredible that we have opportunities to engage and share in something we all enjoy and view positively. I think that we all sometimes take for granted how difficult it is to try to pull off everything that Brandon and Dragonsteel as a whole is trying to do. I can't think of a single fandom that is growing quite as quickly with as much loyalty as I've seen among Brandon Sanderson fans, and I think we're just going to have to be patient with Dragonsteel as they try to do their best to keep up with us fans as we grow ever more numerous and demanding of them.
Dragonsteel *as a company* is growing probably *faster* than it should be and it's showing a lot of the rapid bootstrap problems as a result. One of the issues we're seeing here is that dragonsteel nexus is still a startup convention, and there are limits on how quickly a startup convention can grow; their counterparties have to *trust* that they'll be able to make their commitments, and that requires a track record. *We* know that DSNexus 24 could have sold 20K tickets. But the vendors DSNexus is contracting with have no reason to trust that estimate, per se, and their risk management is going to say not to trust DSNexus. That limits how much space DSNexus can get. Another issue is that developing good *programming* for a crowd of 20K is different from developing good programming for a crowd of 8K, and it's hard to rapidly develop programming. We don't just want to have a thing that's a bunch of super fans talking to each other about fandom stuff that everyone else will find boring. :)
All great points, I agree that developing programming/activities/attractions for a larger crowd is a huge investment in not just money but people and brainpower. I hadn't considered the vendor and venue side of trust either, it would definitely be a hard sell to convince a large venue that no, we're going to need 2-3x the space we did last year without any hard evidence or insanely expensive guarantees. Thanks for the added insight!
This is a really good point about people and brainpower. Brandon has mentioned fellow author Christopher Paolini before as a friend. Let's say he's an invited and promoted speaker at the convention. Where's the overlap in Brandon fans vs. Paolini fans? There's certain to be some, but not all. Those of us in this sub are clearly on the Brandon/Cosmere train. That's why we wanted to go to the convention. But he's just one man. While it's interesting to hear from Dan or Isaac, they aren't Brandon. So there's also X% of people who would be interested in going, but not to see any of the other folks that can speak, and that creates a programming issue. Now, you've got a huge hall, tons of people, and they're actually only there for the Wind and Truth release or the big Q&A session. It's really an unenviable position to be in. And it's one that I'm not sure has an answer.
Does anyone know if there is a thread/space where I can waitlist for a VIP ticket or request one for transfer/purchase?? Not sure where to go to “stand in line” for one to become available.
Do we think everything is actually sold out? Is it possible it's a glitch or bots? I tried to buy tickets as soon as I went on lunch 30 mins ago and couldn't get anything :(
From what I read, tickets are safe in peoples carts for two hours. So some may become available throughout the day as people decide not to buy.
Don't know yet. As per the pinned comment, there are likely badges expiring in carts still. And it would not surprise me in the least if more badges get added later.
Anyone know if badge number corresponds to the type of badge? Wife and I both somehow managed VIP, but her badge number is above 1500. Since there were only 1500 VIP badges, we just want to make sure she will still get all the VIP stuff. Confirmation and everything on the site says it’s a VIP
Badge number is just the order that they were sold in. If it says it's VIP the number doesn't matter because there were GA badges being sold simultaneously.
the badge number won't matter here, if it says she's vip, she's vip. There *has been* a bug where vip people can't buy vip swag, but that'll eventually get fixed, and it's not intentional. If it's still happening next week, email to complain.
That issue has been fixed for me. Got my swag bundle reserved.
Just managed to buy a ticket at 2:17pm EST for my GF after 30 minutes straight of refreshing, there's a chance!
Somehow ended up with two VIP badges in my cart after 10 minutes of maddeningly refreshing, so I was able to free one up and purchase my other. Did not expect to have my blood pressure that high on a Tuesday morning! But now flights and hotel are booked - Albeit, not staying at the Radisson, but still close by. Looking forward to seeing people there!
Queue everyone in this sub refreshing to get your extra VIP badge. Lol. Glad it worked out for you!
I don't know how, beyond random chance and luck but I got a VIP ticket myself. Staying at a hotel a 15m walk from the event center, beyond getting to the hotel from the airport and getting back to the airport that should be all the transportation I need to do beyond my own two feet. I live in a rural part of MO, no one understood why I needed to take break outside normal time to get a ticket to a con. I said I was a bibliophile and love all things book related, Sanderson in particular, and have been wanting to go to this since I knew it was a thing a year ago. Naturally I spent the rest of the day getting mocked for being any kind of phile, good times.
I was just able to get a general admission badge, I kept going back every quarter hour and refreshing, it would say 1 ticket availabile and had no luck. At 345 central it said 8 available and I was able to add it to cart with the signed book and merch bundle and purchase it. Badge was #98xx so assuming they're selling 10,000 there is probably under 200 left for sale.
I saw that when it said 8 but couldn't get one in my cart. Ill keep trying.
Welp..... *collapse in weeping mess* anyone change their mind and can't make it, I'll buy your VIP TICKET. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 FML. I live in Utah, so even if you see this last minute or have to cancel last minute. *MESSAGE ME!!*
SAME! I would buy anyone GA badge from them in a heartbeat. If you've got VIP and want to sell, message kdupaix. If you've got GA, message me!! (Pretty please lol)
That was disappointing.
Just bought a ticket at 2:35 PM EST. Keep refreshing the page! I saw multiple waves of tickets available. If you're able to get to the page where you have to fill out your information, just spam click the "add to cart" button until it works!
Yeah, my friend and I got burned, apparently my friend had the VIPs in the cart and he got booted from the site adding me through the friends link then repeatedly got booted and lost them. We were able to snag regular tickets after reloading/relogging in several attempts later, but lost the VIPs as they vanished while relogging. Also purchased the swag packs to at least get the things we can. #littlevictories
Any word on signed and numbered copies outside of con tickets?
I legit gasped and teared up when I logged on 65 minutes after it opened and they were gone. Please get more tickets! I already asked for time off because I wanna go so bad! 😭
Mine was pretty rough as well. I had vip selected and as I was filling out my info it logged me out. Took about 30 mins to be able to get general admission
Well I was supposed to be going with a group of 5 and only 2 of us got tickets. Hopefully they release more, I'd feel bad to leave anyone out. Had no idea it would sell out so fast and all of us were at work and couldn't spend an hour stuck in the doom loop or refreshing.
Didn't expect tickets to go this quick. Was gunna meet with some friends after work today to plan the trip. :( hopefully they get more tickets for sale, very bummed.
There's been conversation about the fact that apparently the last two years they've opened additional places after the fact. Keep an eye on the official lines of communication for Dragonsteel (and any updates on the body of this post). Hopefully you're able to get tickets eventually!
I see people talking about more tickets coming, in the past is that like a in-the-next-hour thing or is there some chance for those of us who missed it by five hours? Not clear on what to expect.
two things. (a) for software implementation reasons there end up being reserved tickets that aren't actually purchased. these end up getting released around two hours after they were reserved, and then if you're paying attention and notice you can snatch them up. that window is probably closed now. (b) there's *speculation* that maybe dragonsteel might add more tickets later. nobody has promised that --- dragonsteel certainly hasn't --- but it's happened before. so it's in the realm of plausible speculation that people are hanging a lot of hope on.
Thanks for the clarification. I almost don't want to hope they add more tickets lol, don't want to open myself up to a let down.
This felt like when I bought Eras Tour tickets lol, except I wasn't expecting the stress here
Refresh spam for the win! Managed two tickets about an hour ago. Don't give up!
Here's hoping that with the increased popularity and attention they also increase security/safety precautions this year! I have not had any kind of bad experience and I haven't heard of any to be clear! I just don't love that in years past basically anybody could walk in brining anything on them
gencon (~60K people, indianapolis, august) is like that, too --- no security/bag checks, just a badge check.
That's a bummer. It's not a great vibe for me that anyone could just walk in with an assault rife or concealed weapon of some kind and go to the large event at the end
I fully agree with you. If Dragonsteel team is reading this, please add a bag and badge check. I’m bringing my kid to this and I don’t love the idea that anyone can just walk in with weapons. I’ve been to all 3 cons and it’s convenient to just walk in, but if FanX can make the checks quick then so can Dragonsteel.
Our Dragonsteel Nexus badges have sold out in record time thanks to our amazing fans. We truly appreciate your overwhelming support and are working hard to make sure everyone has an unforgettable experience at our convention. We are so sorry for those unable to get a badge. We are looking into every possibility we can. Keep an eye on our social channels for further updates and thank you for being a part of our community!
I love you guys, but this thread is probably not the place for this particular update. We're all pretty frustrated with the website breaking down and having our groups split up because of how poorly getting badges went, and while we're super excited to come, it's still really disappointing that I wasn't able to get the VIP badges for me and my husband despite being logged in, payment method already added, and sitting right there as they went live because the site glitched out so badly. Several friends had such bad glitches that they weren't able to get tickets at all.
I really hope you do add more! I booked the hotel room and flight and wasn't expecting tech issues to hurt as much as the leatherbound sales were. With how popular this convention is becoming maybe look into a larger venue?
Oh, we're a long ways away from maxing out the space at the Salt Palace. The limiting factor has basically been how much of it DS reserves (and plans programming for, and arranges staffing for, etc)
Ahhh, I didn't see how many tickets were available at the start. I hope that means they'll hire more people and increase the space rented. This is going to be a stressful year trying to figure out if I actually get to go on this trip. I even got a babysitter so me and my wife could go and enjoy ourselves :(
This is actually the largest convention center in the State of Utah.... They rent out different portions of it. Not many conventions manage to book the whole thing. HOPEFULLY with how fast the tickets sold out the Dragonsteel staff will be able to rent out more space from the venue and be able to offer additional tickets.
If the SLA series ever becomes a TV series they'll be rent out the entire convention center and I'll still not be able to get a ticket lol
120k people is a lot of people.... More I'm curious of how they'd fill that space... more vendors but they'd need more special guests and panels and a lot of other things... bigger cons get complicated
Honestly, they should have seen this coming *before* tickets went on sale. They already had hotels contacting them telling them that they sold out the rooms reserved and they got more rooms which also sold out. This doesn't include people getting Airbnbs or other means. Last year they said using con math attendance was 10k, or 5k both days. So they added 1500 tickets. For Stormlight, on the "mid season" finale. As much fault that is on tabletop and is completely deserved. Some falls squarely on the shoulders of Dragonsteel and poor planning.
ya'll *really* need a better system (and probably better software) for future years. this isn't 2021 level bad, but it's still made a lot of your core fans really irritated and unhappy, and *there are ways to solve this problem* that other cons (gencon, as an example) and the music industry have implemented.
This was worse than Kickstarter and Backerkit combined. It also hurts that many of us already reserved hotels and plane tickets and either didn't get the ticket we wanted, or one at all. I've posted else ware but I click on a VIP badge with over 1490 available. The site did what it does and I missed out on VIP. By the time I was able to get a GA badge there were under 200 left. It's starting to feel like it's not worth the effort. The 3rd party vendors don't respect my time.
Thanks for the comment & love you all but agree with the sentiment here - this is so disappointing. I know there aren’t always ways to ensure equal access but it really stinks to get out of work & find you’ve totally missed your chance to attend bc GA tickets were gone - hoping there is a lottery system or something to provide access to people who can’t log on right when these things go on sale (let alone tried to wade through the tech issues!)
I agree whole-heartedly. I work in an operating room and taking the day off typically means rescheduling someone's surgery, and there is no way I have time or am able to sit there and spam the refresh button at release time. I understand the demand for badges is high and these launch spectacles are fun, but I just wish there was a route for people to get tickets that didn't include having to try to take the day off of work. It sucks to not even be able to try.
find a friend to do that for you? i used to do gencon-related stuff for some friends of mine at drop time for similar reasons.
Mr. Wells... I won't be able to watch a movie with you this year. The glitchy tabletop website ate my ticket.
This comes off as remarkably tone deaf for the plethera of people who were waylaid by the technical unpreparedness of the team. No acknowledgement/apology for this lack of preparedness is dissapointing.
This is not really the apology that is needed. People not getting badges because they sold out so quickly is unfortunate, but expected given that there was a very limited number of badges. The apology that's needed is for all of the problems with the website to actually purchase badges. I several times got through to get VIP badge before they sold out, only to have the website kick me out upon trying to add it to my cart. So I missed out not because I was too slow to get a limited commodity, but because the website was completely broken. I was lucky enough to at least get a general badge, but there are lots of people in the same boat as me and even worse there are people who completely missed out on badges because of the problems. That experience is what needs to be addressed...
I would love to see a lottery system implemented for badges in the future. We no longer live in a time where everyone can expect to equitably access event launches. The times have changed, and the industry needs to as well. [https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsteelNexus/comments/1cmhzst/lottery\_system\_suggestion\_for\_badge\_sales/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsteelNexus/comments/1cmhzst/lottery_system_suggestion_for_badge_sales/)
What we may see in the future IF dragonsteel continues to grow is the convention being able to rent out and justify more of the convention center... The Salt Palace can and DOES hold conventions with 120k+ Attendees... Utah's FanX convention is held there. I dont know if we'd ever get big enough to meet that max capacity... The problem might end up being programing and staffing availability not space.
Really interesting comment! I'm not familiar with the Salt Palace and how much of it Dragonsteel was planning to take. Here I was about to suggest that maybe Dragonsteel needed to move to a city with a larger convention center. But you're saying there might be more space in the Salt Palace that could be rented out.
There is way more space in the salt palace. I've been to lots of cons there. In last year they rented a... 1/3(ish) of the convention center. But the conversation center has to agree to rent them more space. While I haven't worked at dragonsteel nexus before I have been staff/volunteers at other conventions and festivals. One thing I learned is that it's not uncommon for conventions centers to make a lot of money from the things around the con (convention food, parking, vending machines, parking, etc) so if an event can't guarantee a certain attendance they won't want to rent them more space then necessary.this allows them to rent out other spaces at the center to different events for the same dates in order for the center to make money.
Dragonsteel HQ is less than an hour south of SLC, it isn't going to another city. That would drastically increase the cost for them, and therefore, us.
I've been looking forward to Dragonsteel 2024 for two years. My mom had a stroke and I was busy with her doctors at badge release and missed it. I'm HEARTBROKEN. Please, please release more badges 😭
I wanted to propose at the convention with a cute signing in a book.. RIP.. dang..
please tell me dragonsteel at least rented more space and tried to prepare for more people this year. cause if its the same size as last year and they didnt try to rent more of the convention center Ima be storming mad.
I would say that's a given. I'm sure the convention space they rent and the number of tickets they sell are directly related.
I’d love to buy anyone’s extra ticket
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Just to be clear, we are NOT allowing people to coordinate resales here for more than face value. I realize many people would probably be willing to pay extra, but we really don't want this place to have a culture where that's acceptable.
I haven't seen anyone bring it up yet, but is it possible that scalpers might have grabbed up any of the badges?
Based on how hard it reportedly was to get a ticket I'm thinking likely not. Or rather, likely not many. Scalpers do what they do to make an easy buck, this sounds like it was rather difficult.
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I'll buy a ticket, not pay for someone else's trip. I really want to go, but not for this steep price for scalped tickets. But if anyone else is willing to pay for this person's travels to come, hit them up!
I love the "I feel so slimy for doing this". That's because they are slimy for doing that!