What’s that you just say? It’s New York Comic Con Reservations Day? Surely, every little thing will run easily proper at midday. Surely, they’ll have discovered from all the issues that plagued NYCC Reservations Day 2021. Haha, simply kidding. Today went about in addition to you’d count on any day that requires heavy server load on the NYCC techniques. In different phrases, it didn’t.
The button on the NYCC Reservations web page modified from “Coming Soon” to “Make My Reservations” at 11:45 AM in the present day, quarter-hour sooner than Reservations had been slated to open. But urgent that led to a lifeless web page and a 404 error. No drawback, it was nonetheless early. But then 12 midday rolled round and clicking the hyperlink nonetheless produced 404 errors. But not for everybody. Some folks made it by way of to a digital ready room whereas others nonetheless obtained the 404 error. And then there have been the oldsters who clicked into the road by way of the app, which apparently took them to the 2021 panel registration web page. Sorry, however that 2021 What We Do In The Shadows panel is all booked up.
Twitter was ablaze, because it all the time is when NYCC tickets, lotteries and reservations go stay and instantly crash beneath the burden of the demand. To ReedPop’s credit score, their social crew was tweeting out updates often, noting every time the road was paused and unpaused. Their vendor, Thuzi, was engaged on it. This is identical Thuzi behind final yr’s Reservations Day fiasco. (Ironically their Twitter web page actually two close to similar apologies a yr aside.) Why did ReedPop determine to go together with the identical vendor with out assurances that 2022 wouldn’t be a repeat of 2021?
NYCC formally referred to as in the present day’s Reservations Day queue’s time of loss of life at 2:33 PM this afternoon. Thuzi wasn’t going to have the ability to resolve the server points in the present day. They’ll attempt once more sooner or later later this week? When? They didn’t say. What’s nonetheless out there? They additionally didn’t say.
And that final level, what’s nonetheless out there, that’s a giant query. Because not everybody was caught in an unmoving queue or coping with repeated 404 error screens or queued up for final yr’s queue. According to some customers on Twitter, a bypass hyperlink was circulating amongst Funko collector teams on-line that allowed folks to chop to the pinnacle of the reservations line (Don’t get between a hardcore Funko collector and their Pizza Rat Pop!). Twitter person Bandon Henao (@brandonhenao1) posted receipts – a recorded Discord scroll of Funko collectors thanking their bypass hyperlink provider after efficiently bypassing the road. According to Brandon and different folks on Twitter, Funko collector teams used related bypass hyperlinks to chop the road for Funko Fright Night tickets final week.
They blocked me lol right here you go pic.twitter.com/RW4orU3AxK
— Brandon Henao (@brandonhenao1) September 26, 2022
The massive query is what’s left? Some fortunate few who made it by way of reported having the ability to reserve signings and exclusives, however not panels? Did panels ever open up in the present day? If so, what’s stuffed up? Hopefully ReedPop/NYCC will let folks know the solutions to those questions earlier than asking them to hop on one other digital line later this week. But my ultimate query is, why not return to the lotteries of earlier years? I can perceive why NYCC wouldn’t return to the road up early and get a wristband mannequin that was enterprise as regular for the primary ten years of the conference’s existence. Requiring folks to line up in a single day for decent panels and signings outdoors the Javits Center was each an organizational nightmare and a well being and security hazard. But the lotteries, whereas not excellent, didn’t require folks to must land en masse on the NYCC web site on the identical time. People may log in throughout a set interval of days to enter the lotteries, after which would discover out properly sufficient earlier than the conference in the event that they gained a spot or not. This appears to me, a lot better than requiring everybody to attempt to get in line on the identical time and sit at their desk or telephone for hours whereas the positioning crashes repeatedly. If they go together with this mannequin once more in 2023, I feel we will count on the identical outcomes as 2022 and 2021. Dear ReedPop, let’s not make NYCC Reservations Day Groundhog Day.
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