Registration Experience (Good or bad?)

[JesterPoet]

I respect your opinion, but If Amazon, the largest and most successful online store in the world has not managed to fund and develop technology this sophicated, how can we expect Gencon to.

Ticketmaster does it every day.

EDIT: For hundreds of thousands of people.

 

[Quickbeam]

One word -- typical.

My buddy and I agreed to attack this in tandem, and late yesterday we FINALLY managed to get into the Cthulhu Masters Tournament after a couple years of failed efforts!!

So far today, I have only once been able to pull up the login/registration screens. So much for the upgrades.

 

[GlassJaw]

Ticketmaster does it every day.

EDIT: For hundreds of thousands of people.

Exactly. And so do a lot of other websites. It's not difficult, it just takes cash. If you have enough cash, you can built a network that can handle a ton of normal traffic as well as DOS (denial of service) attacks.

Now I know they have alot of money.

Who is "they"? You mean the company that organizes GenCon? Uh uh. No way. From what I've heard, the company that runs GenCon employs like 6 people. They also don't have anything to do with Star Wars.

 

[CarlZog]

Well, my little dial has been spinning for a half hour, waiting to add events to my cart. I don't want to reload 'cause I'm afraid it will be rejected.

Do you think I'm still in the queue? Or lost?

I tried to re-enter in a different window and got rejected.

Carl

 

[CarlZog]

Who is "they"? You mean the company that organizes GenCon? Uh uh. No way. From what I've heard, the company that runs GenCon employs like 6 people. They also don't have anything to do with Star Wars.

I think he's talking about the Star Wars Celebration -- a massive SW convention they organized in Indy last month.

I'm sure GenCon LLC is doing OK. But they're not getting rich to the degree some of us may imagine. Although as they continue to add more major events to their portfolio, I suspect Peter & Co. begin to see the wisdom in investing in a rock-solid online registration system.

Carl

 

[devilbat]

ARH!!! This is about the biggest joke I've ever seen. I'm logged in, but the system says I'm not!!! Now I've hit add to cart and nothing is happening! Looks like I may not get to play anthing I want. This is the first time I've gone to GENCON and I'm not impressed with what I'm seeing so far! By the way it's 8:15 mnt time right now and the globe has been spinning for 10 mins.

I share and understand your frustration. But know this, The first time I went to Gen Con, I didn't sign up for any games. I picked up Generic Tickets and got into games, I played and ran all night pick up games, I sat in on some seminars, and spent hours in the dealers room.
An amazing time can still be had without every game you try to pre-register for.

I'm not trying to downplay how brutal this registration has been, I'm just saying that you will be impressed once you get there.

 

[alleynbard]

I was logged on at 9:25 EST. I tried to add my events to the cart and you would thought I asked the world to stop.

This is remarkably unprofessional, no matter how you cut it.

Perhaps the estimation of 7:00am PST was not conservative enough.

 

[GlassJaw]

I think they've taken it down again. I keep getting Cannot Find Server errors and my browser isn't waiting around for responses.

 

[direcow]

Well, it seems like some of you are doing better than I. I still haven't seen this elusive "cart" where you can put "events." I can't seem to even log on. I think those of you talking about this "cart" thing are all part of a vast conspiracy directed at me to frustrate me. But I'm on to you all.

 

[Bonzi]

Anyone ready to post a success story now that event registration has theoretically reopened? We haven't had any better luck after the database upgrade, but others may have?

Wouldn't really call it a success story, but I was able to check out at 9:55 am with my events I added last night. My wife and I got everything we wanted except 1 event which only had 1 opening left and we wanted to play it together. I still want to pick up some generics over the next day or two once the server load goes down to normal.