Just a thought for GCIX: Why not have a pre-registration period of say, a week or two, where everyone can load their carts up with events and then run registration on "event registration day" similar to a fantasy sports draft, giving everyone a fair shot at games with no regard to personal schedules, dexterity, connection speeds or server capacities? Diamond Badge holders would get first choice, followed by Platinum Badge holders, followed by Gold & Silver (together?). The order determined within each tier (Diamond/Platinum/Gold&Silver) would be random for the first round and then go in reverse order on the following round. So Diamond badge holders, for example, would always choose first each round, but the last person in the Diamond line in the first round would be the first person to pick in round 2. I think it would save a lot of headaches, especially for the staff, and present a relatively fair playing field to all. Also, I still like the Gold & Silver coin system and hope it continues to be used. It just feels right for Gary Con IMHO.
Or have a day for a "community test" where we can pretend it's a real registration day but get to do a more realistic load.
I suggested something like that to Dale last year, I think, but failed to follow up. Do the "community test" but in order to get people to actually play along, only do events with 6 or more people, maybe none of the GP events, divide the event size by six rounding down (nothing magical about six, but, you know, something like that)...and then those are REALLY YOUR TICKETS. So you still leave the bulk of the tickets to be sold on Real Registration Day, but you get the obsessive people like me taking their best shot at getting tickets, which will then turn into a pretty-good run at a stress test. (I mean, also, you probably have some people hanging around here who have done load testing in real-world IT environments, and could design some load test harnesses for you; just guessing here.) Also make it clear that none of the tests count until the staff says it does, so you can do it a half dozen times in a row, resetting the events in between and voiding everyone's purchases, and everyone knows what they're in for. And if you don't want the ulcers of doing the clicks until the staff decides it's working well enough....then come back on Real Registration Day when we're pretty sure it will be working smoothly, since 5/6 (or whatever) of the tickets will still be there.
[QUOTE="the obsessive people like me [/QUOTE] I think you have a number of obsessive people like you that hammered the system yesterday.
In fairness to our obsessives, if I saw a Internal Server Error, I'd probably mash refresh too. But I'm not an IT guy.
I like to believe that any respective gamer would do the same. With less than 1000 badges and over 3,000 submissions I dont think this group is as obsessive as I would like to believe.
Stahlnee. Its all about the QUALITY not the Quantity! You'll never find a better con, period. True gamers and the people that created them.
Thanks for that. We certainly deliver during the Con itself. We're still working on living up to that reputation for the rest your experience the other 361 days of the year.
Most of my entire online life revolves around hammering F5 like a spastic monkey on some sort of horrible brew of amphetimenes, meth and enough Mountain Dew to put most of Indiana into a diabetic shock coma.
I'm not as long term as most of you guys. But I've gone to the last 3 GaryCons and all 3 registration has crashed on registration day. So it is frustrating, and something that should be fixed if its going to be done every year going forward still.
Then you should know by now its all part of the charm of Gary Con, right? Right guys...? Guys...? Seriously, its pretty frustrating that we've let you down 3 years in a row. We're working on it.
I just want to add that GameHole Con registration in November was fantastic. It was easy to navigate through events and register for them. To be honest, I was actually surprised at how easy the whole process seemed. If there is any way to copy their system over for GaryCon, I think 2017 registration would run great. EDIT: While reading the forums, I noticed some others have already brought up this point, but I'll leave my comment here none the less to echo their sentiment.
If I remember right, you pay a base cost for the badge/registration, and then add each individual event to a shopping card. Each individual event costs real money. I can't recall how much each event was, but it wasn't unreasonable. You are still limited to a set number of "premiere" events however.
GameHole's system is proprietary custom code. That said, don't think we haven't been talking to them about that since last year.
I think they planned something like that originally and some people had a stroke. So they scrapped it and went en masse.
Yes it is. IIRC it was like $2/$3 per "silver" event and then $6 for each VIP event. As someone else said, there is a cap to the number of VIP events you can grab as well.
Last year was about $1 plus fees/hour per event. Two years ago it was about $0.50 plus fees/hour per event. Limit to 2 VIP events per badge. Premium Badges are capped at smaller number than Gold Badges and get to pre-register weeks before the rest of the badges. Premium Badges are renewable starting next year with a small number of new Premium Badges being added into the mix.