Personally, I didn't witness much bad behavior but for sure there's always going to be some. Someone said it best here in the thread already - the show-going community needs to help itself. If you see someone banging the games unnecessarily, say something or notify a staffer. They were pretty obvious with their orange badges. It's not rude to do so. Same thing for setting drinks on games, etc. Don't just ignore it. What if it were your machine? In fact, a good rule of thumb is to treat every machine as if it were yours.

If you have a problem with a machine, or see one with an issue, report it. They had a nice QR-based issue reporting system going and there were enough staff to tell someone personally if you didn't have a smartphone. It takes only a minute. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem. I mentioned to one person that putting drinks on machines was a bad idea, and explained why. They seemed happy to understand the reasoning and put theirs on the floor. I notified the staff several times of people in the EB Lounge who didn't belong there. They graciously allowed them to finish the game they were playing and escorted them out.

I don't buy the "us vs. them" argument for the EBL. It was clearly available to everyone (they even had some left for purchase IIRC) and it was a personal choice to buy an LE badge or not. A friend of mine bought one just for the EBL even though he was only there Friday and Saturday. Premium badges got in at 10 PM. I wouldn't have a problem with that time moving to 6PM, but I rather liked that as an LE holder I could get away from the crowds and heat in the EBL during the day. I hope daytime hours stay reserved for LE badges. I also had pretty much 24x7 access to a TNA, Houdini, DI and Iron Maiden, among others, for the price of admission. I'm definitely doing it again.

I didn't queue up to play anything in the vendor hall, so I've not much to say on that other than to say I'd agree with a previous poster that if someone notified a vendor's staff of someone hogging the machine, they'd take care of the problem. There will always be jerks - if you let them ruin your enjoyment by doing nothing, that's on you. The staffers can't be everywhere all the time. A guy plays two or more games in front of me then turns around and says "One more game", he's going to get a firm "No, you've played two already, it's my turn" and if he ignores that, he's getting a staff member in his face. Same thing with a single starting multiple games. No excuse for that. Play your one game and move on, or at least check if anyone behind you wants to play. If so, move along or see if they'd like to do a multi-player game. There's a lot of fun to be had meeting and playing with new people.

Personally, I've got no problem with a group playing a multiplayer game. It's still 2, 3 or 4 players whether they play together or one after the other. I'm still waiting in queue the same amount of time. Complaining about that is just whining. Same thing with good players having long games. They paid their money to play just as I did. If I don't feel like watching and learning something from their game, I'll move along and come back. That's a non-issue to me too.

I really enjoyed the show again this year. It's the highlight of my summer. I think I got maybe 9 hours of sleep between Thursday and Sunday. I'm a night owl anyway and I made very good use of the LE badge, often at 3 and 4 AM, then off to bed and back up at 8! I put in an entry for the Rumble and the Charity TNA Co-Op tourney, with no chance of winning either one, but we had a kick-ass time doing it. Many thanks to the Southern New Hampshire Pinball Club crew, whose room was THE place to be at midnight Friday and Saturday for Pinball Ninja Warriors. That was a howling good time and if you missed it, you did yourself a disservice. The Vermont Pinball Co-Op crew was there in force and if you heard any Randy Savage "Ohhhh Yeaaaaahs!" it was probably us.

Thanks to Gabe and the crew for the wonderful event and it just keeps getting better! Already counting down to next year...