---
title: 'The Darkmoon Fiasco'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=Vl307SfWyzg'
video_id: 'Vl307SfWyzg'
date: 2026-06-28
duration_sec: 0
---

# The Darkmoon Fiasco

> Source: [The Darkmoon Fiasco](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Vl307SfWyzg)

## Summary



## Transcript

okay so I've made the terrible decision
of getting into the dark moon Fair line
uh purely because it no longer extends
all the way into the middle of Hall sea
let me tell you a story about the Dark
Moon Fiasco Anaheim California BlizzCon
2023 day two the Dark Moon Fair the main
hall has been opened for less than an
hour and one corner of the hall is
already packed shoulder-to-shoulder with
a thousand attendees a chaotic impromptu
line stretches from the fair itself
several hundred feet away into the
adjoining Hall eyeball estimates suggest
that this line is already 4 to 5 hours
long what happened here okay so this
story is actually pretty low stakes
nothing tragic happened and to the best
of my knowledge no one was hurt but it's
an interesting story about multiple
seemingly unrelated decisions that could
have easily resulted in disaster had
something gone wrong first things first
the lay of the land the Dark Moon fair
is situated at the far end of Hall D
which is dedicated to the warcraft IP
and its four current games themed After
the ingame Dark Moon Fair the area has
five attractions of note a merch booth
for collectible pins and badges a
pineapple soft sered food vendor the
WonderWorks toy shop the capsule toy
Depot and the Ethereal trading Emporium
additionally many collectors set up
their trade offerings on the picnic
benches set up around the fair of these
the main attraction is the capsule toy
Depot which itself has three components
first a line for buying tokens second a
line for the slot machines where you
redeem tokens for random prizes most of
the capsules contain small velcro badges
though the potential prizes include
larger plush dolls action figures and
redemption codes for various in-game
items which leads to the third component
a line for a window for claiming any
prize that doesn't fit inside a capsule
this isn't the first time BlizzCon has
had this attraction and it is all always
very popular the Ambiance is fantastic
people love collecting and people love
gambling but there's something more
going on or rather there's a lot of
stuff not going on for BlizzCon 2023
blizzard opted for a more streamlined
presentation structure ordinarily
BlizzCon features a main stage where all
the big presentations happen and three
to five other side stages for smaller
panels like the fan favorite voice
actors panel cinematics breakdown sound
design Etc generally more Niche interest
stuff the philosophy this year was to
design the Halls less around panel
stages which take up a lot of floor
space and more around experiences
gameplay demos photo ops and themed
viewing areas for watching a rebroadcast
of the main stage now there's a lot to
criticize about this decision for many
attendees panels are the experience that
they're there for they don't just want
to hear Executives and celebrity devs
make big announcements on the main stage
they want to hear the people who
actually make the thing talk about their
craft but inarguably the new approach
created a streamlined convention maybe
even too streamlined see here's the big
thing conventions are all about traffic
management you have a certain number of
people who can safely fit into the
larger space as a whole but become a
hazard to themselves if they get too
concentrated so you try and spread out
the cool stuff so it's not all in one
corner you place Necessities like
washrooms and food a little ways away
and distributed throughout the space and
you use things like cues to absorb
bodies with the new approach you could
queue up for a demo or a photo op and
for the most part still have a view of a
screen rebroadcasting the main stage
unless you wanted to attend that
specific event in person you basically
never needed to make a choice between
getting in a line or missing an event
that sounds good on paper in fact it
sounds like the ideal attendee
experience and that's the Trap panels
don't just absorb bodies though they
don't just move groups of people away
from popular attractions into less
densely populated areas of the
convention they impose a timet onto a
semi-random distribution of attendees
they give you somewhere to be at a
specific time in the future future which
imposes limitations on the decisions you
make in the present the Dark Moon Fair
2023 didn't account for many things
first of all it didn't account for Wales
there was on day one no cap on how many
tokens you could buy at one time no one
who designed the gacha capsule game
accounted for the idea that someone
might walk up and buy $600 worth of
tokens and what that would mean
physically for the experience at the
actual ual slot machines every token
someone purchased also represented a
future unit of time that the person
would need to spend putting that token
into a machine turning the handle and
fetching their capsule it also further
represented time that some portion of
them would need to spend redeeming that
capsule for the actual prize so you end
up with the Diehard whales the dudes who
are willing to get in line at 6:00 a.m.
for a 10: a.m. door so they can be first
in line to buy 300 tokens and then spend
10 20 30 minutes each monopolizing a
machine as they crank through these
tokens and just completely murder the
throughput of the whole operation but
the two halves of this booth aren't
evenly weighted it takes more or less
the same amount of time to buy five
tokens as it does to buy 500 but one of
them takes 100 times longer to redeem so
already we can sell tokens faster than
we can redeem tokens and there is no
mechanism to prevent someone from
creating a truly heinous bottleneck so
the fair has its own internal vicious
cycle the bottleneck creates lines that
are so long that people feel compelled
to get in them purely out of a fear of
missing out on whatever is at the end of
that line which makes the lines longer
it creates crowds so dense that people
can't get physically close enough to the
booths to even see what the line is for
or if they're in the correct one but
then we add the Special Sauce because
almost no one has a timetable imposed on
them because they don't have a voice
actor panel on the opposite side of the
convention in an hour and a half because
they can see all the panels on the
screen right next to the line they make
the decision to get in a 3-hour line
just to buy
tokens it's probably a bad sign that the
line that I've been in leads up to a
blizzard employee holding a sign that it
says line closed that's how you sell so
many tokens on day one that thousands of
people decide that their first order of
business on day two is to rush to the
Dark Moon fair and commit to the line
hell or high water and that's how you
get a 5H hour line now they did
eventually almost sort this out on day
two at the fire Marshall's insistence
they capped the line the entire fair was
turned into a gated exhibit token
purchases were capped at 50 and they
stopped selling tokens entirely halfway
through the day if you could get into
the fair at this point it was more or
less running as it was supposed to the
lines for toys and pins were reasonable
so there was no pressure to commit to a
line which keeps the lines reasonable
but I can't say they fixed it the damage
was more or less done the line for
General entrance basically never stopped
being capped for the remainder of the
show and the line for redemptions only
dried up because the fair physically ran
out of prizes I don't know how many
people bought tokens they never had a
realistic opportunity to redeem but it's
definitely not none anyway thanks for
watching I never managed to get tokens
or use the capsule machines personally
so I had to take my entertainment from
watching this small disaster build over
the course of two days