Lol.  

I buy tickets for many events/releases/concerts.  

This system is pretty darn good.  I was happy with my experience.  The system did not crash.  It moved slowly as it took me an hour or so to check out but I thought it worked out well 
 

Gee, look at all the people with the same poor experience I had.

I submitted my wish list as soon as was possible. After 5 minutes I get a Server Unavailable message. Have to login again and resubmit to find that I am 6489 in the queue.

I got 2 of the events I put into.

At least with the hotel reservation system (where I went in as soon as possible to find the only rooms available were 7+ miles away), I have the plus that the cost of the room is lower than staying downtown as a trade off. Getting screwed out of events and then reading about people who "got all of my events" makes me wonder if I will ever put up with this stupid system again.

And then to have to sit around until it processes you? So my plans for the day have to be put on hold instead of simply offering a, "I agree to pay for the events I get" option?!?

Actually I am considering just cancelling all together at this point.

I thought the system worked pretty well myself.  I got an initial number of a bit over 1800 which is my worst ever, I am usually sub 500.  I filled my wishlist with 50 events, for each time spot I had a main event, a backup, a backup for the backup, a backup for the backup of the backup etc.....

I hit submit and the system slowed to a crawl but after a few minutes I got my place in line.  Even if none of the events in my wishlist ended up in my cart I am very impressed with the number of events this year.  There are thousands of good events still available.   In fact, I have been combing through them, tweeking my schedule.'

Good job Gen Con! 

Just for the record, I got a 503 warning as well when I first hit "submit," during which time NOTHING on the GenCon site was accessible (not even the message boards).

Similar experience.  Hit the button as soon as noon hit...system processed for a minute or two, and I was 6200+ deep.  

I was already kind of disappointed because some of the tournaments I enjoyed playing in the past aren't on the list this year (like Five Tribes, for instance) and may or may not get added, but I only got 1 of the 3 events I did sign up for for me and a couple of my friends.  And the one thing I did get was one with 200 people (so it wouldn't have likely mattered if I registered today or not for that one).

Maybe spots open up or events get added between now and then, but this process feels horribly broken.  So I lose out of playing a limited number of games I really wanted to try out so someone that got luckier with the queue got up to fifty events they wanted first???  How does that seem right?  And I feel wrong to overbook multiple time slots for something just to more ensure I'll get one of them.  Just feels like gaming the system and making the problem worse.

I'm not backing out of this year's GC, but everything is making me think pretty hard about whether I want to do it in future years.

I got 42.  Used chrome with a 15mbps connection and hit Ctrl+f5 every 15 Sec from the 1 min mark to the 15 Sec Mark.  Then spammed the submit button starting with one Sec left

only problem was I got tickets for myself and my friends, but they got charged for the same tickets too.  I think there might be some sort of error that will need to be straightened out.

For the people that are saying it works fine- you mean it worked fine for YOU.  The only thing I'm asking for is for the button to work properly when clicked.  That doesn't seem to be asking too much.

Was online before the cue went live; clicked right when the counter hit zero, had the error, had to refresh and ended up 4600 down the list... and of course didn't get many of the events I wanted.  Glad I lost sleep over nothing (I work 3rd on weekends)

I did start with a 5800 something place in queue, and only got 4 events. I did find that by jumping back in and refreshing a few times, I jumped quickly from  3600 that second time, down to 1100, then down to 400 and done pretty quick.

It's a bit much to claim it doesn't work when it clearly does.  Just as it would be a bit much if we claimed it was just you that was having problems.  Vagaries of computers, operating systems, browsers, internet providers, etc....these all conspire against stable code to produce eccentric results.

Refreshing when you're already submitted does nothing to 'jump you up the list'. All it does is if your browser hanging is update it with your real position. Once your list is submitted it really doesn't matter what browser you use as your position is dictated by server side changes as people check out.

I started in mid 4000's and whiffed completely. I ended up getting all my events at the 3 hour marker as people dropped stuff back to system. This is gencon the only one's determined to make it a bad/good time is you. I've had some really good luck in event days and some incredibly bad. Never have i had a bad con where i didn't find stuff to do. Did i get my 1st choice(s)? No, but i got what i wanted in the end. 

There are going to be issues with stuff like this with how many different variables in what is basically 2 a year load limit (hotel and events). I'd rather this than ticketmaster/livenation race to scalpers anyday. 

no way to make everyone happy - going to a fully automated system would have people up-in-arms. Too few events...too many people.

It is unfair to sequentially process lists, favoring those who get lucky with all their events and the unlucky with none. A more equitable method would take all lists submitted by a fixed time, process by event, give everyone an equal shot at it, fill in by primary, then secondary, tertiary, etc. until the event is filled, update wishlists to show results, then allow people to fill in, drop, or update as desired.

Quite honestly, with the number of people who were waiting to click on the submission button by noon on Sunday, there are really only a VERY FEW people (speaking in percentages) who had problems at all. Does everyone wish they got all the events they had on their wish list? Absolutely! But this isn't reality. The reality is that there is no way for 100 people to participate in an event that only has room for 8. So no matter what, somebody is going to have to miss it. I had an issue where my wishlist and cart just disappeared, but I was still able to get into events that I wanted. May not have been my first choices, but I have no way of knowing if some of my first choices were not sold out anyway.

I see the posts by people complaining about how it didn't work or how they don't like the way it works but (not trying to be rude or mean-spirited) nobody has a solution on how to make it better. I am not sure how anyone can make it better. Perhaps a pre-event type sign up would help potential event creators guage how many events they would like to host which would help make sure that there are more events of some types to accomodate all the players. As an example, I am really interested in trying out Numenera but there are only a few events scheduled at GenCon this year. If there were some type of pre-event interest way for people to at least show that they would be interested in attending this, perhaps more events would have been scheduled. This may not help on the wish list submission bog down that will happen EVERY year as GenCon grows, but it could give event creators a bit of an idea as to what to plan for the convention prior to event submissions. For example, if 100 people indicated that they would be interested in playing Board Game XYZ and only 5 people expressed interest in RPG ABC, then perhaps an event host/creator would be more inclined to create more Board Game XYZ events and less of the RPG ABC ones. This may help prevent some events from not being filled due to too many of them being created

What is hard for all you people out there talking about not getting everything to understand? I got TWO events after a 90 minute wait...not nearly everything, not a lot, but rather virtually nothing.

I see the posts by people complaining about how it didn't work or how they don't like the way it works but (not trying to be rude or mean-spirited) nobody has a solution on how to make it better. 

I outlined a more fair process even. Why do you feel a need to defend an unfair system?

I agree with dbachman. I like the wishlist system, I emphatically agree that there's no way for everyone to get all the events they want, but it is not a good distribution for some people to get every event they list, and others to get none. Making it look like a button mashing contest doesn't provide any benefit. If we could all provide a wishlist, and have the system process them at noon, we could each have a better shot at getting that one event we really want. 

 Under the current system, the best approach is to give a group of people a list that includes high priority items for everyone in the group, up to the 50 event limit. Then all those people hit the system at noon, and the winner sweeps up as many high demand events as possible for the entire group. For people in relatively large groups, this approach is beneficial, and will result in getting a good number of high demand events. This approach favors members of relatively large, well coordinated groups, and has some strong disadvantages to the system overall, but, in a competitive system (which this is), people will take any advantage they can. The good news is that the number of people attending in groups, who can actually organize well enough to execute this approach isn't terribly high. I have two people in my group who, despite many reminders, won't even look at the event listings until after event registration has started. Still, each year we do a little better as a group.

The problem isn't that everyone isn't going to get into what they want. I completely accept that I won't get into everything. However, the system is inherently flawed.

All wishlists should auto-submit at the time event registration goes live and be processed automatically.  That processing should be that all users with a submitted wish list are randomly ordered.  Then in that order each user gets their top-most available wish list item fulfilled and added to their cart. When you reach the end of the random ordering, you go back from last to first using the same logic and continue snaking through until all wish list items from all users are complete. Then an email is sent to all users reporting that their cart is available for 2 hours until the items are released to the general populace.

After the initial processing, the wish lists can be handled first-come first-serve like they are today, but at least there would be a fair system in place for the general submission.  The current system stinks.

Aaronmlopez, there are two problems. One is that there are too many people for the events. Attempting a more fair distribution changes that a little but in the end the only solution is for more people to run the events that they want to participate in. Community effort, and that's not something that we can count on.

The other problem is that 6000+ people hit an e-commerce server at noon on a specified day, and the system struggles to handle the load. It is a huge surge that hits once a year. There is absolutely a fix for that problem, but gencon doesn't want to implement it, for whatever reason. There is an entire industry that exists to solve exactly this problem. There are great implementations out there, and getting better all the time. It would be less expensive than a homebrew, and work better, but, we get what we get.

 I love gencon, but there are areas that could improve.