Registration Experience (Good or bad?)

[Mixmaster]

I had no real problem getting into the registration, seeing as I waited until Tuesday. Of course, by then a lot of the games I was looking at were booked. But, I did get into a few, including one of the True Dungeon late night events, and I was able to get all the seminars I wanted with no trouble.

If it's seminars, board games, miniatures and card games (mostly) you could wait a week or month after it starts, but certain games MUST be taken early or you just don't get in. I mean, almost all the Call of Cthuhu mods sold out by EOD tuesday. The Iron Lore demos were gone Monday etc. etc. etc.

 

[buzz]

What, there's nothing in between?

There is absolutely something in-between, and it's not a solution that should be out of GenCon, LLC's price range... though only someone who knew their IT budget could say for sure. Given the size of GenCon and the kind of profit I imagine they make, I think they could afford it.

The issue could simply be that management simply isn't IT-savvy enough to know they can do better. Lord knows I deal with that at work all the time... :\

 

[DonTadow]

If it's seminars, board games, miniatures and card games (mostly) you could wait a week or month after it starts, but certain games MUST be taken early or you just don't get in. I mean, almost all the Call of Cthuhu mods sold out by EOD tuesday. The Iron Lore demos were gone Monday etc. etc. etc.

True True. I tell all the friend's I've brainwashed into going all these years, if your'e just playing board games or doing seminars, you can honestly wait until you get there to register. But RPGs, the good ones, sell out quick. Especially those RPGs in which the DM's have a great reputation.

 

[qstor]

Well, Ticketmaster is on a whole 'nother level from GenCon, so I don't know how apt a comparison that is, but I see what you're saying. I'm not trying to imply that what GenCon needs to do is easy. I'm saying that I think it's within their grasp, and they owe it to their customers. I also work in the Web arena, and I know that it's doable (or that, at least, there is ample room for improvement).

The "it's only three days a year so why should they have to bother" idea is the main thing I have an issue with.

I'm not in the computer field but I agree 100% that the server needs a LOT of improvement. I mean..if they know registration starts on Monday why not call the tech people in over the weekend to run some tests on the server speeds etc. That way the server won't keep hanging up and running frickin SLOW on Monday when registration starts. By EST in the afternoon, the server was running fine but in the morning as the posts in this thread show, the server speed was HORRIBLE.

I haven't bought concert or game tickets from Ticketmaster online but I imagine that if a big show was coming up and their server was running similiar to GenCon LLCs was on Monday, I would be furious at management.

Mike

 

[The_Universe]

I'm not in the computer field but I agree 100% that the server needs a LOT of improvement. I mean..if they know registration starts on Monday why not call the tech people in over the weekend to run some tests on the server speeds etc. That way the server won't keep hanging up and running frickin SLOW on Monday when registration starts. By EST in the afternoon, the server was running fine but in the morning as the posts in this thread show, the server speed was HORRIBLE.

I haven't bought concert or game tickets from Ticketmaster online but I imagine that if a big show was coming up and their server was running similiar to GenCon LLCs was on Monday, I would be furious at management.

Mike

It was still crap at night on monday. The server didn't appreciably improve in speed (in my experience) until late Tuesday afternoon - I couldn't even check out properly until 21 hours after event registration had opened. That's *not* a small error.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Maybe I'm hammering this point too hard but testing is irrelevant without a target.

Lemme explain. No, wait, I'll sum up.

Last year their servers got hammered and they could take 100 requests per X. (Per what doesn't matter, it's an example.) They don't know how many requests per X really came in, all they know is that at 101 reqs per X the system horked.

This year year they ensured the system could take, say, 150 requests per X, a 50% increase in total performance (and probably tripled the cost of the whole system). Again, it horked. They probably had supplemental servers on stand-by delivery and cut them in Tuesday. Maybe that took the system to 200 requests per X but that still wasn't the peak.

Next year they'll build something bigger but they still won't know how big it needs to be. Does it need to handle 300 requests? 500? A thousand? They can't tell because they can't see how many requests are turned away. It's not like a store where you can see the throng around the block.

What's more is that it's a moving target. Each year more people will use the online registration so they don't have to wait at the Con. The usage varies as well, since past years' users will do their best to hit it the first hour to get the games they want,magnifying the load even more.

Lastly, the slow server is not changing the ORDER in which you get your games. When the servers down, nobody gets nothin'. Somebody else isn't getting into "your" game.

The reason you don't get into the games you want is that there are not enough slots for the high demand games. The very phrase "high demand" indicates that it's very desirable. With 35,000 attendees, even assuming only a third are RPGers with the rest CCG and Minis, that's around 12,000 people. If 1% of those gamers find a particular event appealing that's 120 people which would require 20-40 sessions to accomodate them. There's just not that many GMs!

 

[JesterPoet]

Lastly, the slow server is not changing the ORDER in which you get your games. When the servers down, nobody gets nothin'. Somebody else isn't getting into "your" game.

Actually, that part's not 100% accurate. I had all day to work on registration, with no other responsibilities. Because of that, I could click every 30 seconds for hours, and get everything I wanted in my cart, which was waiting for me the next day to check out. Some people didn't have that time luxury, and they got screwed because of it.

 

[woodelf]

Should umbrellas be waterproof?

Most aren't. They're water-resistant. In most rains, they'll keep you dry. But i've been out in storms that were heavy enough and long enough that everybody's umbrellas soaked through. And for some cheaper umbrellas, it doesn't take much--an hour or two of heavy rain'll do it. [Probably because they're more aimed at people who need to cover short distances, such as between buildings, in the rain, and those who're gonna really be out in the rain will buy real rain gear. No, there's no "heavy duty alternative" to the GenCon registration system that matches this parallel.]

 

[woodelf]

We also have no idea how much they inherited from TSR. Were there any multi-year contracts that GenCon LLC can't afford to break? How much hardware came with the Gencon purchase that was too expensive to abandon no matter how ill suited it is?

I'm pretty certain the answer to all that is 'no'. First of all, there were 3 intermediate owners between TSR and GenCon LLC: WotC, then Andon, then WotC again. Secondly, i remember from conversations at the time that Andon specifically chose not to use any of the existing TSR computer systems, in favor of those they used to run all their other conventions. So it's likely that at that step all old TSR stuff was dumped, and it simply wouldn't have existed for GenCon LLC to inherit. Also, IIRC, the Q&A session after the first GenCon LLC GenCon revealed that the hardware/software WotC had been using was deemed too tightly integrated into WotC's/Hasbro's systems to be sold, so they had to start from scratch when they took over--that was part of their explanation for why the first year was so rocky.

 

[Mark]

Should umbrellas be waterproof?

Most aren't.

Of course they are.

No, there's no "heavy duty alternative" to the GenCon registration system that matches this parallel.

Of course there is. You look over your business Internet needs and then get servers that are geared to cover the heaviest times, the peak periods, and double it. It's how you design a system that works. You then watch your growth and when you get near 150% of capacity, you increase your ability to handle even higher potential peaks.