GenCon Call to Action!

[HiLiphNY]

Since we're chiming in with opinions on Gencon. . . .


Put me down as Very Unsatisfied. I have found Gencon's "service" to be very weak over the last 4 years I have attended. It's really quite shameful.

I refer to the registration process, the handling of generic tickets, the handling of the main party in the plaza, the RPGA events mustering process, the booking of booths, and overall problem resolution while at the Con.

I may still go and pay my share, but rest assured, I don't keep my opinions quiet. When people learn that I have attended Gencon in the past, I make it known exactly how bad the set-up is. Does this dissuade new attendees? I hope so.

 

[Bonzi]

Jeeze! The first guy isn't the troll, here.

I've been going to GenCon for more than 25 years and this is the WORST registration I've ever been through (and that includes 1980, when I camped out on the sidewalk overnight to get those first-come, first-served tickets).

Just because YOU had little trouble doesn't invalidate the original poster's experience. I'm so angry at having done all the work to lay out a schedule, then being rejected from the site for eight straight hours, then being told that every game I wanted was sold out that I'd very much like my money back for registration and that hotel thing. I'm not GOING to GenCon now, and I'll be out that money solely because of the incompetence of those who built the registration system.

Year after year, the pre-registration doesn't get any better.

This is my first time at GenCon, but I pretty much agree that the registration process was horrid. To wait to upgrade the database until after you open it the public was pretty ignorant IMO. With the time they've had, the database should have been optimized to handle the expected loads and that just wasn't the case from what I could see.

In any case, you might want to give the events another look when the site comes back up. Some of the games I tried to get into were coming back as being full and then when I tried again I was able to add them to my cart. The entire database was pretty screwed up, so the events you want might not be full just the database was screwed up. Good luck!

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Last year was my first GenCon, and except for a nearly 5 hour wait in line the first day for open gaming tickets (I think that's what they were called...the "non specified" event tickets or whatever) I had a wonderful time. I'm really, really bummed out that I can't go this year. So if any of you see the girl dressed as a nun in the vinyl habit, tell her I said "Hi." sigh....

 

[Henry]

My memories of Gencon (I've been 5 times since 1993 now) are vastly different from other peoples' apparently.

Of the 5 years I've been, I registered before-hand (except for the first year, where I learned the lesson to pre-register) and every time I've pre-registered, I've never had a problem with either my events, getting into my events, or having someone not show up to run my event. I've never had anything but fun at Gencon, both at Milwaukee and at Indy.

However, pre-registration is the key word. Had I shown up and registered the day of, my wait would have been much longer. Otherwise, I wait in line for a short while (45 minutes or less) get my badge and tickets, and I'm ready to rock, roll, play games, and spend my money on hideously overpriced merchandise.

I expect some confusion and delays in any organized event, but I've never been victim to any major chaos or snafus. (Unlike poor Russ who in 2003 was victimized not just by Gencon but by the airline he flew on, too. )

 

[francisca]

Gen Con is awesome. I'm sorry you had a bad time, but it is absolutely worth attending each and every year, and it is absolutely worth however much it costs to get there.

Let me echo that. Despite the unexcusable living hell that is GenCon online registration, it is well worth it.

 

[MUKid]

I'm a Troll! Wheeee!

Nah, I'm not being a troll, just really aggravated. Crothian's ratio of posts to mine is 1762:1. Erik's is a more tolerable 37:1 (love what you've done with the mags, by the way -- Dragon looks great these days, although I'd like to see more adventures in Dungeon). Either way, if you took the weight of all the electrons spent storing these guys' posts it'd be greater than my (not insignificant gamer-sized) dry weight, so I promise I'm not trying to troll. If I were, I'd use ALL CAPS or mean smiley faces like this or something.

The thing I'm most annoyed with (this year) is event registration. Note I am not bringing up hotel registration, which (if you didn't know) was a fiasco this year as most people were told the servers would be closed up until the next morning, but then you could register for hotels all that night (I should know, I was able to do it). (Okay, so I just brought it up. I learned this trick of saying, "I'm not even going to bring up..." and then bringing up just what you said you weren't going to bring up while I was watching the presidential debates one year.)

I KNOW it's really hard to run a con, and the computing technology to put the thing together makes a Federation Starship's Library Computer look like a Vic-20. I know Peter Adkinson is a swell guy and a gamer's gamer and has a +5 Charisma bonus even on his bad days. I realize that there's no place like GenCon, and that you're never going to find so many gamers in one place at one time, and they have tons of cool seminars and events aplenty.

However, the registration system bites. It bit last year, it bit two years ago, honestly it has bitten huge bites ever since it went online back in the days of WoTC running the Con. This year is probably the worst it's been.

I am not a techie and I don't have access to GenCon LLC's books. I make no statements like "They're making tons of money, why can't I get into my events?" I don't say, "If only they'd get a hyperthreaded dual overhead cam shaft multi-processor server running Unix all would be well, how could they be so dumb?" All I'm saying is that it is awful, that I've complained about it in the past, it's not better this year, and I think if a few industry buddies of Peter's were to take him out for beers and say, "Dude, our customers are really pissed... what can we do to help make this work out better?" maybe things would get better.

Or maybe not. But it can't hurt to try. I got a nice reply back from the True Dungeon guy already. He seems nice. Maybe he should run GenCon.

And see, with this post I have increased Crothian's ratio to a mere 1669:1. Sweet!

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I'm all about the Gen Con love and I wish I was going, but ....

The computer programs used to manage Gen Con over the years have been specifically written to manage Gen Con, because no other computer programs for running conventions can handle the task. Let's remember, the show has something like 30,000 attendees. That's a LOT of people.

Huh?

DragonCon gets 30k. I'm sure there are a lot of other hobbies that can bring out this many people. Look, from a cost-benefit standpoint I can see the problem because you don't want to sink resources into a tool that you essentially use only once a year when you can use the same resources to do other things. But it strikes me as odd that they would feel the need for specialized software. Gen Con may be a fantastic event, but there are other events this size.

 

[Tarondor]

Was that the year the early morning mists were rising on Parkside campus and a piper came stoof up on the hills and played? (I've been going to Gencon on and off since '78 and don't recall which year spawns that particular memory.)

OH...MY...GOD! Yes! I'd forgotten about that! That guy was fantastic!

Yeah, I got in line the night before, and there were six people in front of me. I woke up the next morning with perhaps seventy people in front of me. "We were holding their spot" was the explanation. I suppressed the urge to kill (I was 16), but when the same jerk tried to shout down the piper, I'm sorry to say that my Scots/Irish blood got up and it did in fact come to blows. I almost missed the con.

I'm all grown up now, and don't get into fights anymore. Promise.

(That was also the year that Gary Gygax, Brian Blume and Dave Trampier signed my DMG. And I played The Awful Green Things from Outer Space with Tom Wham. Best GenCon ever, at least for me!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think it only fair to report that at long last (after more than 20 hours of trying, I did manage to register and did in fact get into all but one event (Iron Lore) that I really wanted. So the system did work for me in the end, just with a LOT of aggravation. Fair's fair.

 

[Mark]

OH...MY...GOD! Yes! I'd forgotten about that!

Yeah, I got in line the night before, and there were six people in front of me. I woke up the next morning with perhaps seventy people in front of me. "We were holding their spot" was the explanation. I suppressed the urge to kill (I was 16), but when the same jerk tried to shout down the piper, I'm sorry to say that it did in fact come to blows. I almost missed the con.

I'm all grown up now, and don't get into fights anymore. Promise.

It might sound cliché but there really was something eerie and magical about that morning.

 

[Alzrius]

Gen Con is awesome. [...] it is absolutely worth attending each and every year, and it is absolutely worth however much it costs to get there.

Amen.