Will Nationals be in St.Louis in 2010?

[prodigal_fanboy]

The West Coast players have to fly anyway, so why does it matter? :/

It is a twenty-nine hour drive straight from San Diego to St. Louis, acc'ding to Google Maps. It is a forty hour drive straight from San Diego to Baltimore, MD.

It is theoretically viable to take a two day drive to St. Louis from the West Coast, stopping for a six hour rest at a motel, leaving early... Wednesday morning and getting there late Thursday night. Not fun, but definitely doable, esp. for a family who takes a van cross-country, or a group of college-aged kids who gang up and rent a van and split costs.

You can't just say that all West Coasters will fly and make that financial decision for them, you are not God.

In the interest of fair reporting, I live in North Carolina, so Baltimore is half the distance from me that St. Louis is.

Gen-Con is held in Indy every year and has much more than 1500 people.

So then it's probably fine for people like me, quasi-broke college age kids.

It might not be the best for families, unless you have other things to bring up?

 

[DarthPika]

Here's the problem with St. Louis. If I lived on the West Coast, with out a doubt I would want to go all the way to Baltimore or NYC rather than go to the middle of nowhere. Seriously, there's so much more to do on the East Coast.

As for people on the West Coast, before you complain about driving, please remember that you get worlds more than anyone else. >_>

 

[Prime]

The West Coast players have to fly anyway, so why does it matter? :/

If it were held closer to the West Coast, then the East Coast players would "have to fly anyway" while the West Coast players could drive.

Great point. For some of the north east players, they had to fly to Nats this year anyways. Why not have it on the west coast?

As for people on the West Coast, before you complain about driving, please remember that you get worlds more than anyone else. >_>

Correct me if I was wrong, but Worlds was in Florida for 2 years and will be in California for 2 years. How is that west coast getting worlds more?

 

[DarthPika]

Take a good look at a map Prime before you say that Flordia is as easy for those on the East Coast to get to compared how easy Cali is for those on the West Coast to get to.

 

[Prime]

I never said it was 'easy'. I was correcting your point where you said that West Coast has gotten Worlds "more than anyone else".

Unless you live in the state where the event is being held, it isn't 'easy' to drive/fly to that event.

 

[Lawman]

Great point. For some of the north east players, they had to fly to Nats this year anyways. Why not have it on the west coast?



Correct me if I was wrong, but Worlds was in Florida for 2 years and will be in California for 2 years. How is that west coast getting worlds more?

Matt: You are wrong. Cali has had worlds 3x now. The rotation is: FL 04, San Diego 05, Anaheim 06, Hawaii 07 (extreme west coast!), FL 08 and back to SD 09. 3/6 yrs in Cali, 4/6 on the west coast. Only 2x in Orlando. Never in the Central USA.

Keith

 

[Naki Feralkin]

It appears that multiple people are suggesting Indianapolis. Are the logistics of that truly viable for a 1500+ person event (counting TCG, VG, and staffers)?

If they can hold Gencon, they can hold Pokemon Nationals. I don't believe he's suggesting to hold it at Gencon, but the Con Center is absolutely MASSIVE with there also being a lot to do and a lot of food choices.

 

[Red Haired Shanks]

I think they would do it in St. Louis again, it's in the middle of the country which makes it best for everyone to go.

 

[secretsof2113]

As far as St. Louis goes, I really wasn't all that impressed with the city as a whole. I guess I'm just so used to the hustle and bustle of latenights in downtown. To me, there was really nothing in the city that was open late at night. Thursday was really the only time I had to explore the city, and we took the family that was with us to the zoo, and we drove out to the Loop. I'd picked up a travel guide before, and the Loop sounded like a really awesome place to go. It seemed that the travel guide hyped it up a lot more. It reminded me entirely of my college town's Downtown area. The heat certainly didn't help things along at all. We put aside around 4 hours to explore it, and we were done in about half that time.

As staff for nationals, I didn't really have any problems with finding food, but I know my boyfriend did. I guess we felt so spoiled by the huge foodcourt that was in the Columbus Convention Center, that we just weren't used to having only a small deli in there that seemed to close awfully early.

Even the restaurant at the hotel seemed to close really early. While the Holiday Inn Select wasn't a bad hotel, there were a few things that sort of bothered me about it:

-The walls were entirely too thin. On the second night there, the people in the room next to us were having a party in their room, and we could hear everything.
-Being on the side of the pool was bad. We could hear everything that was going on in the pool from our room. I tried to snag a quick nap on Thursday afternoon before the Nats staff meeting, and that went over like a lead brick because there were a ton of kids in the pool making noise.
-The "privacy" curtain on the pool side. If you had the lights on in your room, and the curtain drawn, you could see right through the curtain. Hooray for using the bathroom every time I wanted to change clothes.

Obviously this isn't something TPCI could be blamed about, as it was far from being their fault when they booked the block of rooms. Sounds like some designers didn't think of the noise and privacy issues that would take place when there's a pool right outside of your room.

Maybe my familiarity with Columbus makes me biased. I typically love every big city that I have ever been to. There was just something about St. Louis that I really didn't like as much as the other cities.

 

[gashmoigidy]

I know everyone will jump on me for this, but I didn't really like it in Ohio. But it was even worse in St. Louis

 

[tehmoe]

i think someone should make an online poll about where it should be (midwest big cities only obviously) and then time it for like 2-3 weeks and a the end of the poll's time post the results. and from there we can have an idea of where it should be?

 

[SD PokeMom]

you're assuming that the location of us nationals '10 is up for a vote to begin with.

it's not.

'mom

 

[The_Lurb]

Matt: You are wrong. Cali has had worlds 3x now. The rotation is: FL 04, San Diego 05, Anaheim 06, Hawaii 07 (extreme west coast!), FL 08 and back to SD 09. 3/6 yrs in Cali, 4/6 on the west coast. Only 2x in Orlando. Never in the Central USA.

Keith

You can't seriously consider Hawaii being more accesible to people on the west coast, everyone had to fly there. =/

The central USA gets Natz. every year which imo outweighs the west coast getting worlds every other year or whatever. I liked the idea of having two different "nats." and then having the playoff. This would give West Coasters much more of a chance at nats. since I don't have the means to attend both nats. and worlds so I have to do extremely well to even have a chance at a rating invite if I choose worlds. If I choose nats. I'd have to get the paid invite (yeah right), I couldn't go to worlds even if I did get the ratings invite. Why should the west coasters "have to fly anyway", are we lesser than the east coasters or something? =/

 

[Articjedi]

I'll have to agree with most of you as far as venue, the Holiday Inn just wasn't the best area to play pokemon before and after the event. There just wasn't a good enough place to do so and there's no central area where players from all the different hotels could meet.

And origins is a joke of a convention, I'd never pay 60 bucks to enter there if pokemon nats wasn't there. There's better game conventions in every big city in the country. Spend your money somewhere else.

However, I will disagree with all of you who said it was too hard to get food. There was a train that took you wherever you wanted to go in the city, and none of you took advantage of that. I can't believe you expected everything to be in walking distance in a city that big. The staff at the Holiday Inn was also willing to shuttle anyone almost anywhere in the city if you wanted to hit a restaurant, IF ANY OF YOU ACTUALLY ASKED THEM, they would have driven you to white castle, to a good bbq place, anywhere you wanted. I went on the internet, looked up places to go, then asked the staff if they could take me there. The only reason why I didn't hit all of them was due to time constraints.

 

[vanderbilt_grad]

We used the Holliday Inn shuttle ... but that one van wasn't going to help much during the event lunch break. Our first night there we didn't think we would NEED a shuttle given that Google had about 40 or so places to eat listed within just a few blocks. We were just shocked at how many of those were closed. Maybe things will be better next time, but right now I get more sour the more I think back on the food problems we did have. There just isn't any way to put any sort of positive spin on the food problems.

 

[The Gorn]

And origins is a joke of a convention, I'd never pay 60 bucks to enter there if pokemon nats wasn't there. There's better game conventions in every big city in the country. Spend your money somewhere else.

What are some cons have 4500 events?

I know Origins, but I'm looking for others.

 

[homeofmew]

Wait, you work? Wonders never cease!
I'd have to say origins would be my first choice. Indy would also be good.

of course I work ~_~
How do you think I fund my Nats/Worlds Trips.

 

[Articjedi]

What are some cons have 4500 events?

I know Origins, but I'm looking for others.

Are you really going to attend 4500 events, where 90 percent of them are something you'd never touch? Quantity isn't quality, especially when most of the stuff I see in the catalog is something where only 6 people show up.

I have PAX every year in the summer, the week after worlds. Better events, bigger companies show up, better games.

 

[The Gorn]

Are you really going to attend 4500 events, where 90 percent of them are something you'd never touch? Quantity isn't quality, especially when most of the stuff I see in the catalog is something where only 6 people show up.

I have PAX every year in the summer, the week after worlds. Better events, bigger companies show up, better games.

PAX would be fun. A friend and I have talked about going to Seattle for PAX but have yet to do it.

But it's not the same type of con as Origins and Gencon. And there are only about 80 or so events.

Not sure how many of the non-Pokemon events you participate in, but game conventions such as Origins and Gencon are built around events involving less than 10 players. (Few games, in fact, involve more than 8 players. Check your game store.)

But I want to do PAX one day. That'd be fun.

 

[Articjedi]

There are less events at PAX because you're not counting the less organized stuff, especially the booths that are showing off all the new games coming in the next year. They're not events, but you'll spend a good portion of your time there. The question really is, are you going to spend all the time you're going to spend occupied in something? A video game convention is going to have events with larger attendance compared to a board game convention.