The Daily Grind: Do you attend specific MMO fan conventions?

As an outsider observer whose never had a chance to go to a meetup OR convention, I personally would like to see it stay in more of a convention form.

The reason I say that is a majority of all attendees will have to fly to the event.

If I'm going to fly to Cali (where most conferences are held) from Florida, I better damn well get at least a few days of entertainment out of it. There is no chance in hell I would fly out to California for a "meet up". It's just not economically feasible.

Now, living in California would make this an entirely different story; one where you can choose which conferences you go to and if EVE is having a meet up an hour or two away, a drive down the interstate maybe wouldn't be that bad.

The last and only MMO convention I went to was connect 08. I would go to more fan fest stuff but they just don't happen in the UK.

Might see If I can go to PAX this year but I some how don't think I will be able to.

It sucks being the UK its almost like the company's just want our money and don't give a rats.

Last year's BlizzCon was my first. I may go again this year, and I would consider attending other gaming conventions if they were in the same general vicinity.

I haven't been yet, but I'd like to. I think those things are a blast.

One thing about CoH that is really an incredible event they do is HeroCon - which is a 3 day fanfare where players and devs interact. It's not nearly the scale of blizzcon, but I think that may work in the players favor, as they get a lot more one-on-one and lengthy time w/ the devs.

Blizzard doesn't hold conventions anywhere near where I live, so chances are that I will never attend one. I live on the US East Coast, so Anaheim, Paris, and Seoul are all equally remote.

I want to to go one of the EVE Fanfests at some point, but I've never gone to a fan convention as of yet.

I have two big problems with these types of cons.

First, there is usually a West Coast bias in terms of location. Any repeated location is biased towards part of your fan base. Ideally the location would rotate geographically to give everyone a chance to attend. If not...well consider not doing it. Are you in the convention business or the gaming business? Wouldn't it be cheaper to travel to a few geographically diverse comic cons or gaming cons instead?

Second, there should never - NEVER - be in-game swag granted for out-of-game attendance. Going to the con, enjoying it, seeing some preview stuff, and/or getting out-of-game sawg should be enough. The vast majority of people would love to go, but cannot due to economic constraints or the fact that they have, like, a job and a family to attend to. In-game items should be equally available to everyone who plays, and a real-life event is always going to be easy for some people to attend and nigh impossible to others.