Why WorldCon?
Okay, I have a bit of a dilemma.
My wife wants to go to WorldCon 2008. Because, "you know, it's WorldCon". But that doesn't sell me on it... WorldCon is just a big SF convention, and I don't "get" SF conventions. We had a couple that ran in town for many years and I only went to them for the gaming... and at $200 a head, WorldCon is darned expensive just to go there to game.
Thing is, I don't care about meeting authors, hearing authors read their work, panels about SF "things" or otherwise mingling with a few thousand people who do care about SF that much. If I'm going to a con, I'd rather go to a pure gaming convention, like GenCon. Sure, I love SF, but meeting an author doesn't increase my enjoyment of the work at all.
I'm sure there are things at WorldCon that I'd enjoy... but I don't know of anything I'd enjoy enough to justify going.
So... sell me on WorldCon. Why should I go to WorldCon instead of GenCon this year?
Edit: (And would someone clear something up for me? Karen won't go to GenCon because they have porn stars in the dealer's room. She thinks WorldCon is too classy to allow such things, but my searches tell me that "porn star row" is moderately common among SF conventions nowdays. Does WorldCon usually have porn stars?)