EDIT EDIT: Well, all passes for PAX Prime 2012 are gone, in a record 2 days...

EDIT: Apparently the 3 day passes are already gone, they sold out in less than 12 hours, holy shit...

It is that time of year again, when PAX tickets go on sale and we start spending way too much money to book hotels and transportation to Seattle.

Tickets went on sale today and so did booking for hotel and travel. There was a glitch with the system last week and they had to take registration down, I wouldn't expect 3 day passes or booking at the best hotels to remain available for too long this year.

And finally... I got booking at the Sheraton! WOOHOO!

At any rate, I'm excited, hoping to see more GOGers there this year.

I'm going with 7 other friends this year. Gonna be great!

Not fair that you have so many geek friends;)

Of the the two that would have come with me, one will be on his honeymoon and the other has other obligations:(

I think I might try hitting up actual panels this year.

Can you explain PAX for non-US users... cause I was pretty sure there was a PAX East last month and I feel confused :D

There is one in the East, and one in the West. Different times of year.
Same outfit. More info in the link below.

3 Day passes are already sold out. Single Day passes are still available, but aren't likely to last long.
http://prime.paxsite.com/

I see PAX East,Prime & Dev... that was I reffering too for more explanation :)

PAX (now known as PAX Prime, since the advent of PAX East) was the original PAX, held in Seattle. It typically is the last weekend of August or first weekend of September (it straddles the months this year).

I can't say whether PAX East is as big as PAX Prime or not, but PAX Prime is freaking huge. Last year MS took over the old pen and paper/CCG floor to add HALO Fest and companies like Privateer Press (the Warmachine guys) had rooms pushed even further out.

You can spend the entire weekend just doing one thing and never get bored (tabletop, pen and paper, waiting in line to demo upcoming titles, talking to devs, going to panels, etc.). Plus there's concerts, nightly parties (often by invite only - some Seattle based companies have them at their offices, e.g. Arenanet) and loads more stuff. If you're press, or know someone who's press, you can often get into press only parties. Even after the expo hall shuts down and you don't have a party to get to, you can always go grab a beer, then come back and play some cards or tabletop, the games go on literally all night.

Steve Jackson was just sitting around playing Munchkin with a bunch of people last year, yep, it is that cool. WTF, they only went on sale today... I wonder if something odd is going on...

And this was the answer I was looking for. So basicly it is a same expo in diff towns. Damn you get PAX east in April... E3 in June and PAX Prime in August... Geek bonanza for sure :D

To be fair, most people would attend either PAX Prime or PAX East. In theory you need to be industry to go to E3... in practice not so much...

Maybe, airfare can run 500-1200 USD across the US (unless you book a great deal, not impossible, but pretty hard during a con) and hotels will run 400-800 USD. PAX tickets are cheap, it's everything else that kills you.

And, most of us don't get much paid vacation so taking time off for both might seriously eat into vacation (which is often also your sick time) if you even get either of those benefits.

For sure it is not cheap but yet... the whole fun stuff you can see and do deserve it :D

LoL Maybe a wealthy geek bought ten or twenty thousand extra tickets in order to help the event be less crowded. Over 70,000 people attended last year.


With growth like PAX has enjoyed, perhaps they it may not be long before there is PAX Euro and PAX Asia +.

PAX Euro in Macedonia will be fun... than they can say they invented gaming (joke...kavazov will understand it)

I'll be there. Maybe this year I'll meet you, ovoon.

We should do another GOG meetup!