I must say, I was pretty nervous about going to PAX since I heard how overwhelming it could be. That didn’t stop me from enjoying it though! *puts big girl panties on*
I did only get a Saturday pass since this was my first PAX ever and didn’t really know what to expect. There was so much to see, so much to do and my friend Rachael was right, I should have gotten a 3-day. But now I hear next year they’re doing 4 days. I imagine that will be too long, so I might just get a 2 or 3 day and hope that they have options to bundle those together instead of having to purchase them one-by-one.
One thing I expected and heard from many is the lines, they’re outrageous! But if you want swag or to enjoy a demo of any of the games featured, you must endure the pain that is waiting. Bring comfy shoes and a hand held device, because you could be standing in a line for an hour or more. I just think of it as Disneyland; Have to wait in order to enjoy the 5 minute ride, or in this case, the 15 minute game play.
I didn’t plan accordingly either. I mean, I knew which after parties I wanted to go to, but I didn’t have a clue about which venues inside PAX I was going to check out so I missed out on a lot of cool shit, like free Borderlands expansion pack maps. The thing is, you never know what each company is going to give out, or at least I don’t. Maybe if I went up to people standing in the line what they were giving out, I might have had better luck. Oh well, there’s always next year!
I did check out the Curse party and I must say I was highly disappointed with the setup and the non management. We stood in line for a good hour or more just to get in, which happened to wrap down the stairs and around the corner, but the people that came in up stairs decided that they were just going to stand in line up there and cut, making the line for everyone else who was being courteous a hell of a lot longer. There was no one directing traffic, or managing the lines and it was total chaos. My boyfriend at one point got annoyed and decided to go direct traffic himself. He told a few people that the line is down the stairs, but they decided to just stand there still, and after a few minutes of my boyfriend staring at them and he not backing down, they decided to leave. He deserved VIP access for that, but they decided to give it to someone else who was standing next to us that decided to join in after he seen my boyfriend doing it. BOO! So we finally get in and go stand in the drink line, which I might add is right on the fuckin’ dance floor, so you have sweaty, stinky guys bumping into you the whole time while you try to get your one FREE drink that you’ve stood in line for over 2 hours for, and it’s hot, and making you sweat, because there’s 50 other people smashed together like sardines. We should have gotten a sardine unlock achievement! Once we get halfway through the line, we realize we need tickets by those that are standing in front of us, that of which we didn’t receive on the way in. My boyfriend goes out and grabs them for us and we proceed to wait. We drink our drink, eat a few bites of the appetizers that were out and leave because the party is unbelievably lame and head to a sushi place, and then call it a night.
The next day, we went to the Guild Wars 2 Launch Party an hour early and was shocked to see that there was already a line wrapped all the way around the entire upper floor. I guess yesterday didn’t sink that clearly into my head. I should have known better. So we find the end of the line, which BTW has almost started to wrap around twice by the time we got there and we proceed to wait. After an hour and 45 minutes of standing, we’re finally let in. We get our free in-game item, the guild wars 2 t-shirt, some posters, and a free drink ticket to redeem for beer or chardonnay. Normally, I don’t like chardonnay, but FREE is FREE, so I drink it up. I must add that the venue they chose for this launch party was pretty silly. They should have known that hundreds of people were going to show up for this, and not to have it inside of a mall at a small bar/club type place. The fire marshall’s came when the line got too long inside of the mall and had to kick people out. Luckily we got in before that happened, otherwise I wouldn’t have been a very happy camper.
Once we were in there, we lucked out and found a few spots at the bar which faces the line as they come in, so my boyfriend pulls out his server name sign that he made while waiting in line and proceeds to advertise Jade Quarry. We get a couple laughs, some raised eyebrows, and a few people who come up to us and let us know that our server has handed their ass to them more than a few times. People were even so kind as to give us their free drink tickets since they thought we were cool, or maybe they felt sorry that my boyfriend was holding a sign, kind of like he was panhandling or something. hahah. One person came up to us and you could tell he was a smart ass/jokester type and wanted to kind of brawl because of the server sign. He was joking, we knew that, and my boyfriend mentions he’s a blue belt in jiu jitsu. They give him shit most of the night and then come back with one of the creators of Guild Wars to come talk to us personally. It was his brother! LOL He’s like so I hear I am probably going to get my ass kicked because of my brother. My boyfriend shook his hand, we talked about the game and how much we enjoy it, and he had him sign his hard copy. That was pretty cool, and we had so much fun, which might have been partly because of all the free booze. We had about 6 drinks each, so I was feeling pretty good that night. I didn’t want to leave, but a friend of ours didn’t like beer, nor wine, so he wanted to go as the drink prices there were ridiculous. We left to make him happy, but I wish we didn’t.
Here’s hoping that PAX 2013 is even better!!
