Getting BlizzCon Tickets: Round 2
Posted by 
pixiestixy on Monday, May 18, 2009 - 9 Comments Tags: battle.net, blizzard store, blizzcon, blizzcon 2009, convention, grunty, queue, sales, ticket sales, tickets
pixiestixy on Monday, May 18, 2009 - 9 Comments Tags: battle.net, blizzard store, blizzcon, blizzcon 2009, convention, grunty, queue, sales, ticket sales, tickets 
Less than 30 minutes after tickets went on sale for BlizzCon 2009 Saturday, they already were sold out. I was one of the lucky ones able to snag a pair for my husband and I. But thousands of people still were left in the ticket queue by the time they sold out.Thankfully this year, Blizzard is giving us another chance. A second batch of tickets goes up for sale in two weeks. And now we know exactly how the buying process goes. Here's how I landed my tickets:
- About an hour before tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. PST, my husband and I both logged onto our individual Battle.net accounts and updated our payment options. The site seemed to be functioning fine as of that time. We went ahead to the Blizzard store page, which redirected us to the ticket sales page. We wanted to have the site loaded up well before the ticket sales began.
- Five minutes before the tickets went on sale, we started refreshing the page every few seconds. My computer said 12:58 (since I'm on the east coast) when the site refreshed and went from saying "Tickets Unavailable" to "Select Quantity." You can only buy 5 tickets per mailing address.
- It took my computer about five seconds to refresh the page. By then, my husband already was in the queue at position 351. He entered the sales page almost immediately. I, on the other hand, got in the queue only seconds later and was at position 1,708, with an estimated 17-minute wait time. So those few seconds made a big difference.
- I did end up making it to the sales page around 1:15, but it didn't matter. By then, we already had our tickets.
But my time in the queue was interesting. Blizzard put a graphic on the page showing the percentage of tickets still remaining, so we could watch it drop several percentage points every minute. At 1:28 tickets for this round sold out. But by then, tens of thousands of people were waiting in the queue.So, what can we take away from this? If you're hoping to try again for tickets in the next round, get to the page early, and refresh starting a few minutes before the sale. If you get in the queue RIGHT away, you'll have a much better chance of scoring tickets. Both my husband and myself were able to get to the sales page since we entered the queue within seconds of it going up.
And don't forget there's another way, too. If you want Grunty the murloc marine but can't attend, you still can watch parts of BlizzCon through pay per view. And, of course, we'll be bringing you the best of the convention here at Project Lore, too!
So who else had luck with getting tickets so far? I'm curious how many others had a relatively smooth buying experience like I did. Any of you going to try for tickets on the 30th?
Reader Comments (9)
i was gonna go but decided that going from CT to CA was a bit pricey for my budget, so imma just buy it on PPV
I was in the queue at position 333, but I thought I was going to be one of the first.
I was pretty shocked when it said I was in Queue.
Plus, Blizzard adding that graphic was pretty mean since you kept begging for those not to finish.
Nice to see Project Lore are covering the event.
I was hitting refresh every 1-2 seconds and I ended up #7415 in the queue. Needless to say I did not get tickets. I'll try again in the second round, but it's a complete crap shoot.
The least Blizzard could do is limit tickets to 2 per person so the scalpers wouldn't be buying five at a time.
I joined the queue at 4251 and didn't get tickets. It was around #500 when it told me they were sold out. If they were all sold at once, I'd have a ticket in my hand...but now I have to start all over.
I agree with Shawn Coons though. Five at a time is crazy. Two would be great. I'd think four should be the absolute maximum...but even that makes it easy for scalpers.
I say make it two. If a third person needs a ticket, they can try like the rest of us. Five is just dumb...look at eBay for proof.
I got me and my bro a ticket. I went to the page about 15 min ahead of time and just hit refresh over and over constantly til 12 o clock (Im in central time zone, Chicago) but i got in the queue at 11:56 and I dont remember what number I was cuz it took like 2 seconds for it to redirect me to the checkout page. When that happened I thought I was bein over dramatic tryin to refresh the page over an over before the tix went on sale becuz of how easy it was for me to get to them. But soon after I found out that I was at the right place (in queue) at the right time and whatever I did worked out perfectly. I wish there were ways of making it IMPOSSIBLE for scalpers to get tickets PERIOD! But even at 2 tix per person there will just be scalpers on 2 or 3 computers havin their family or friends help get more tix for them to sell on ebay for a rediculous 500 bux a ticket. Well I guess if you miss out a second time you could take out a loan to get a ticket off ebay....
Got mine thanks to the missus being a veteran on line ticket purchaser. Thanks to people being able to purchase five at a time, a number of my guildmates will be able to go to BlizzCon.
It's simple really. If Blizzard really wanted to curtail the scalpers, all they would have to do is adopt a strict identification policy for ticket holders. This would allow people to buy tickets for other people legitimately, and the inclusion of a Blizzard managed ticket transfer process would allow a way to handle emergencies and what not.
@ Dankbud420x
i see wat u meant on ebay 500$ a ticket god i friking hate scalper so much, for the people who actually wana go wont go because of the scalpers and the scalpers family trying to help them is just plain stupid, i mean for me, my mom and my lil sis we actually really wanted to go to blizzcon but that probably wont happen becuase of stupid scalpers.
The second round sold out even faster.
I blame the scalpers.