Michael Lopp:

The cap on WWDC tickets means it won’t go the way of SXSW – a wildly successful conference that has grown consistently since its inception. I used to go every year until one late night we looked around a huge sea of strangers and decided that we no longer knew this conference. The experience had become diluted. It had become unfamiliar, full of strangers, and unknowable.

There is a lot of truth to that. A lot of people go to WWDC to meet up with old friends — the socializing is just as important as the sessions for many people. Lopp provides some other great insights in the article too.