Huge Queue for Wishlist Processing
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Posted by bloodyaugust

I remember it being _busy_ in years before COVID... but a queue in the tens of thousands a minute after event registration goes live? That's insanity. I'm so worried I'm not gonna get the items in my wishlist, much less be able to get into anything else...

Posted by random_axcess

I was going to post the "I missed X event" thread.. but my que placement was 10k within a couple seconds of going live and just got disheartened. I can guaruntee I didn't get any events as I am still around 8500 as I type this and in the past I missed the majority of events when queued at only 1500-2k.

Even at the largest GenCons I haven't seen this.

Posted by philshepherd81367

I echo the sentiments shared. My group is normally around 5k on the wish list, but this year we started out at almost 10k. What is eye-opening is that the ticker is only going down by a few hundred every 15 minutes or so. Maybe the numbers will be way back up since there are no longer any covid restrictions. Good luck to everyone on their wish list. 

Posted by tinabear81

My group has a nice spread sheet and everything that we used to help us build out our respective wish list while spreading out the cost for group events....I'm currently sitting at 8971 and thinking we'll have to alter the spreadsheet further than anticipated. Certain things are a 100% write off at this point...True Dungeon, Numenera (there were only 6 events for the whole con), Shadowrun is probably out, and the one supplemental activity I was looking forward to.
Sigh. I will find things to do as other events get added and people change their schedule. Honestly, assigning lottery times to wishlish processing/ event ticket purchasing might not be the worst thing, but there's probably a good reason why they haven't done so.

Posted by triad1

? Wow, the wish list queue is processing like 500 lists an hour by current queue standards.  I'm guessing I should check back after dinner in … 5hrs time?  I'm like about 5500 in the queue right now so … I guess it's video game time … until … ?   

Never seen it like this before.  I mean one year in the past, it took about 90 minutes to fully process once around.  This might be a new record …!  

Posted by rriffil

Hey Gencon 2023,  So the Wish list processing is super slow this year.  Being a retired IT professional, all I can say is I am so disappointed that you can't make a processing system that processes at even a moderate speed.  In past years my queue number would be around 5 to 8K and process in about 1 to 1.5 hours.......This year my number started at 8006 and in almost 2 hours its still around 5K.

Posted by triad1

...Or did someone spill their coffee on the server?  :D

Posted by jedijawa74

It's still better than the GAMA Origins event registration.

Posted by random_axcess

My que position just dropped below 6k after two hours (started around 10k), it has sped up but I definitely think something is going on server side vice people side.

Edit:
Looks like something changed in 12min another 2k have very quickly dropped off.

Posted by triad1 random_axcess

random_axcess wrote:
Edit:
Looks like something changed in 12min another 2k have very quickly dropped off.

Yup.  That's correct.  Looks like the coffee on the server got cleaned off!  :D !

Posted by tinabear81

I was about to say, maybe they paid someone for some extra server power or got another server processing things. Things appear to have sped up considerably; I am now knocking on all the wood around so as not to jinx things.
What does one sacrifice to the server gods?

Posted by bloodyaugust tinabear81

tinabear81 wrote:
I was about to say, maybe they paid someone for some extra server power or got another server processing things. Things appear to have sped up considerably; I am now knocking on all the wood around so as not to jinx things.
What does one sacrifice to the server gods?
RAM!

Posted by helenbb

The slow  processing time is nerve-wracking, but I still prefer it to a server that crashes.

Posted by kurtreznor

i was on a zoom with multiple others trying to get full runs of TD tickets.  The first person to process was able to relay some interesting info.  it was taking long enough to process his wishlist that he saw the 'tickets in cart' number change as it added tickets.  at first, he thought there were only 2 runs that he got, but then there were 3 and a half.  and at one point, he had tickets for a run that conflicted with another run that was already in his cart.  Those tickets disappeared after his next refresh.
Our best guess is that the system was updated to start adding tickets to your cart, then AFTER each wishlist line was added it checked for any errors, and if there were errors, it dumped them back out of your cart.  Which also seems consistent with speeding up later as many tickets were not available to even add to the carts.
Maybe they have a reason for doing it that way, but it seem horribly inefficient to me, and was at least 10x slower than any previous year (but still better than the server crashing and constant time-out warning years).

Posted by piggystarfish

Got on this morning to try and round out my schedule with some leftovers, and still have to sit in a wishlist queue. It's been 10 minutes and I'm still number 155 in line. Something must have really happened to their servers. 

Posted by anthonybarnstable

The highest queue number we currently have reported is 13205, after about 4-5 hours, everyone completed one pass through the line. When you consider wishlists were up to 50 events each, each with numerous tickets per event and 2 different if/then checks (if all tickets not present/then skip, if time overlap/then skip), that feels very reasonable. The big difference is the traffic is just increasing a lot. I don’t blame Gen Con. 

The two different options for further optimization I would enjoy: 
A. Give everyone a time to book events like the housing lottery. It makes it easier to predict what will sell out by the time I can buy tickets to help with wishlist planning. 
B. Process everyone’s wishlist priority 1 in queue order then process everyone’s wishlist priority 2 in queue order etc through line 50, items stay in cart for maybe 4 hours instead of only 2. You can do a system like it processes all wishlists submitted by 12:30 once, then 6:00 then 11:00 pm. (You can even extend to Monday if needed) 

Posted by nightcrawler51

Sitting at 255 Monday morning for 30 minutes now.

Posted by okkult

I've been at 103 for two hours.

Posted by jedijawa74

Why is anyone still processing wishlists the day after registration?  Just add them to your cart.

Posted by hannman

I'm a Software Engineer and this has me thinking.  Not to make the process more complex, but I would prefer to see that the system took everyone that submitted events within the first 30 seconds into a queue then prioritized everyone's #1 event first.  Then process everyone's #2 event.  With the current system, you have like 10,000+ people hitting submit all within the first second at exactly noon CST.  Then if you're lucky enough to get a decent position, you get most of your events.  If you're someone who's at the back of the line, you're lucky to get anything.  Also if you hosted this on a platform like Azure or AWS, you can pay for a lot of processing power for just 1 day of the year which isn't bad cost wise.  The rest of the year, you could host the site for practically nothing.

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