Sorry, you're mistaken. Last year, random access times were assigned to everyone regardless if they logged in at noon or not. If their randomly assigned time was 12:35 and they logged in at 1:00, then they could immediately access the portal.
Nope, not true. That was the case if you bought a ticket after the portal opened, but there was no need to login at noon if you purchased beforehand (except to find out your time that would be there no matter when you logged in).Here, I'll quote the exact description from the Gen Con web site from a year ago:
"ACCESS TO HOUSING PORTAL
"Random scheduled access to the housing portal is required to distribute initial opening server demand, eliminating housing page "time outs" and crashing. When housing opens, all attendees who have purchased a badge prior to housing opening will be put into a pool and given a random scheduled position to access the housing portal. Access times can be immediate or may last up to three hours. Badge purchasers will be given a countdown timer so that they know how long they will be waiting for access to the Housing Portal."
I'm happy to now hear your 'mea culpa'. :)
No mea culpa. You still had to log into the Gen Con site to find out if you won. Only after that were you granted access.
"Portal" may have been a poor choice of a word for me to describe it, but the system still required you to be at your computer and log in. Many people didn't, or didn't do it promptly. The odds for people who did log in at noon were still better because the times went so much faster.
The system now basically hands you had a golden ticket before you even log into anything.
Now, the big question. Where did you find 2016 Gen Con web pages with housing policies info? They do not come up with a web search and all of the official housing videos from 2015 and 2016 have been pulled from youtube. All I found was an official announcement related to credit card changes. Where are you getting your quotes from? As you may have gathered in regards to your Facebook poll threads I like to evaluate sources of information- unless that site says you didn't have to log in right at noon because Gen Con would hold rooms for you based on your unknown random access time my point about wanting to log in right at noon is completely valid.
If one person had a random time of 12:00 and someone else had a random time of 12:01 but the 12:00 person didn't log in until 12:03 could the 12:01 person take a room the 12:00 person wanted? If yes you still wanted to log in at noon to maximize your chances- even if what you quoted above is completely accurate.