Registration Experience (Good or bad?)

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

Yep. I quit (for the moment!).

Luck to all of you that are still trying!

 

[vutpakdi]

Why cant you run a queue of say 100 people let the first one on and then queue the next one? Is it not that simple? (Note I know nothing about this I am a physicist)

That, I don't know (just shot way beyond my limited understanding: again, I do application interaction design). I would imagine that there are some practical considerations such as still needing a performant web server to handle the requests and requests and manage the queue as well as what to do when a person's time comes up but he isn't there. But's that's just wild assed guessing on my part.

I have seen some download servers do something similar: you're dumped into a queue and are told that your download will start in 45 minutes once the 58 people in front of you get their stuff downloaded first.

Better let the the web backend people (who know what they're talking about as opposed to me) answer.

Ron

 

[Mixmaster]

Don't get me wrong. I'm just suggesting reasons why they may not care. I'm NOT defending bad service.

As for accepting "free help," I wouldn't have bristled, but I would have politely refused. It wouldn't be arrogance -- just not as useful as you might think. It's the kind of thing where a million experts and would-be experts would be knocking at your door with a million opinions, ideas and suggestions, but none of them would have the whole picture, so you'd be wading through a LOT of well-meaning but flawed and largely useless advice. It's just not as effective as having one, well-organized, competent team in place. Unfortunately, I'm not sure they have that.

I agree with your statement about their staff. But I would be VERY surprised if their IT person(s) wasn't asking peers for advice.

I do realize that the best person to know a system is the one who works on it every day. But I also realize that if someone offered for example, to help stress test the server so this wouldn't happen today, i'd take it.

I'd have answered faster, but I have to KEEP HITTING REFRESH!!

 

[devilbat]

I wonder why they couldn't stagger the event sign up? Say, everyone who registered prior to today, true early birds, can register May 16. If you wish to pick your events at the same time you purchase your badge, then you can start registration May 20. Make it worthwhile to be an "early bird"

Also, why not stagger RPG registration, board game registration and Card game registration. Yes, I know some would have to register three seperate times, but it would also cut down on the loads.

While I'm complaining, why won't they mail my badge and tickets to Canada? Is the extra forty cents in postage really that big a deal? If so, charge me an extra $5. If it means I can avoid the long line ups Thursday morning, then so be it.

 

[Chaldfont]

I still haven't been able to even log in. But this is now up on the site:

Event registration is live. They system is very slow at this point due to the number of connections. If you have your events in your cart and are unable to check out, log out of the system and try back again when there is not as much traffic on the system. The events will be held in your cart for 23 hours. We apologize for this inconvenience and are working on increasing the response time on the system.

 

[Mixmaster]

I still haven't been able to even log in. But this is now up on the site:

Wonderful! Now if I can only ADD some items to my cart.....

 

[JesterPoet]

I'm trying to get some stuff OUT of my cart, so I can maybe checkout.

But if it'll be held for 23 hours, maybe I'll leave off so some others can get on.



Don't worry... I'm not hoarding TD... I'm trying to get other games out.

 

[vutpakdi]

Wonderful! Now if I can only ADD some items to my cart.....

After much persistence and patience, I've been able to add things to my cart, but I haven't been able to check out yet. I think that the trick is to just click on the Add to Cart button and wait.

If you get a "Connection refused" message, click again.
If you get a "Not signed in" or a message saying some things were added and then there was a weird error, go back and click on Add to Cart again.
If it just seems to hang (Waiting for registration.gencon.com), wait until the status bar area (on Firefox at least), says "Done" before clicking on Add to Cart again.

Twice, I was on the verge of clicking on "Add to Cart" again when it finally said that my requested items were added to the cart (just before I gave up).

Now, if I can only checkout...

Ron

 

[Mixmaster]

Don't worry... I'm not hoarding TD... I'm trying to get other games out.

I wonder who's hoarding the Dungeon Crawl Classics??

 

[JesterPoet]

I wonder who's hoarding the Dungeon Crawl Classics??

It ain't me. I run them for my group. Wouldn't have much fun playing them.