All rooms in block gone by 11:52 PM = the numbers at this year's con are going to be insane. You could still see some airport rooms this time last year.

Whether you are happy or not, the lottery system is the fairest way to distribute such a small amount of downtown/connected hotels to what is going to be the largest crowd ever.

I was quite happy with the crazy room grab rush at noon on Sundays.

It meant that anyone willing to do the work for a good room had a very good chance at getting one.
It meant people who were a bit lazy, didn't pay attention or didn't feel like trying didn't get one.
Screw fair; working hard to get what you want is the American way, or it was until this soccer mom 'everybody gets a trophy' attitude got started.

I fail to see how you clicking the button a microsecond before I did meant that you put in more work than I did.

Now the housing bureau says "NO ROOMS available" at all. So, at least you got something. Housing has been a major issue for GenCon for a number of years now and this year was bound to be worse. 

My advice: keep looking.

GenCon is a victim of its own success and should have moved to a larger city by now.  I would suggest something like Chicago (I do not live there) or some other hub with a ton of hotel rooms.  Don't get me wrong, I love Indy...but the prices are beyond obscene these days.  Everyone thinks WOTC is nuts for ditching GenCon the last few years (and I was thinking the same thing) but maybe they were seeing the writing on the wall.

I have been a loyal attendee since 2005 (I know there are folks that have been attending for like 50 years) and have stuck with it, even through the nightmare lines of 2006 and 2007, but this has me seriously questioning attending the con after this year.

Harsh thread title.  First time GenCon attendee.  4:13pm time slot, so no d/t for us in-block, and my group ended up paying for out-of-block at JW at about 50% above block rates.
FWIW: Thanks to the mods who will be sh*t on for the next couple days.  Remember folks, at least they are present in the forums, and they didn't invent this system.  Voice the displeasure, hope they hear it.  Obviously, I and most people who wanted d/t at these rates are disappointed (~80% of us).  It's always more productive to have plausible alternatives to share, though.  They're committed to Indianapolis for a while, so what could work?  Considering the limited inventory they have to work with, it at least has a broad appeal type of 'fairness'.  But of course, you'll still get the "I'm more fair than others cuz I bought by badge 1 min after it opened", etc. 
There are many great Cons out there.  If you feel this housing system is terrible and a dealbreaker...support other Cons! 
 

I noticed this too however - last year there was a bunch of inventory in the outlying hotels.

Maybe Gen Con just didn't secure as much since it didn't get used last year (and as mentioned above it is of marginal benefit to attendees anyway, since you can get the same deal on any travel website).

So since you failed to see, that might be why you failed to succeed.
It was a lot of work, but it got me a down town room every time.

If people want to go to a smaller convention, those already exist. Origins, PAX, Adepticon, various local conventions, etc. Plus if they split the convention they don't just cut their own attendance, they increase their costs, and the costs of vendors who want to attend both. What you more likely get is two downsized conventions, with a fraction of the vendors since most game companies can't afford to attend every convention. Arguably, attendance isn't rising either, it's stabilizing.

If you'd like a smaller convention in June, come here to Columbus. Origins now has participation of WOTC and Fantasy Flight, along with the annual huge presence of Paizo and Catalyst. Hotels here sell out over the course of months, not minutes.

Origins housing block is already sold out as well. :(

As much as people don't want to admit it, the reason why some people suddenly cannot get a connected hotel room after getting one for 20 straight years isn't because of the system that's been put into place, it's because attendance doubled in five years. People that were lucky the last few years were eventually going to have their luck run out.

I am truly sorry you didn't get a downtown room.  It happened to us last year for the first time and it is a total bummer.  I had to book outside the block at a huge price and also work really hard checking the housing portal and the forums to score enough rooms for my party.  I've been there but it can still work out depending on if you're willing to keep working at it.

That being said, it is not the lottery's fault.  There just aren't enough downtown hotel rooms for all the people since Gen Con has been growing the last few years.  There is no other city that has more within walking distance to the convention center except Vegas (and that has a bunch of other issues) so moving the con to a different city will not help.

Things went fairly smooth this time.  

I think looking at it from a human nature perspective the system of preassigning log in time while logically fair gives people the feeling of having no control.

The old shotgun start was completely random too it was a complete luck that you got in before all the downtown rooms got sold out not to mention it tended to cause the servers to curl up and die,  causing even more frustration.

It however gave people the feeling of control, which is help soothe hurt feelings.

I have to say I liked this year's better than last year's, mainly because when I got the email with my time on Saturday morning telling me my portal would be open at 7:15pm, I knew there weren't going to be any rooms left so I could make plans to do other things.   I didn't have to be sitting at my computer right at noon to find out that I wasn't going to get a room in the block, and waste a day in the process.

So thank you, GenCon, for giving me back my Sunday.  :) 

I'm all in favor of the new system, because it's much less frustrating to have a time and be able to plan a bit rather than deal with the madcap server-crashing dash of previous years.  If you thought not being able to book a room downtown this year was bad be glad you never had the experience of putting in your credit card info for a downtown room only for the server to fail and someone else to snag it out from under you.  Could it have gone better? Certainly, and i feel at this point that downtown rooms are enough of a hot commodity gencon might want to break those out into some sort of separate lottery similar to VIG (with some held for medical nessescity).  But compared to whats come before the staff did a hell of a job.