Or even administered electronically. You have a month to register, as per currently; you can choose to register in groups of up to, say, 4 (to avoid the "I have a ticket but no one else I know does" problem).

After registration has closed, you pick the right number of tickets.

1-2 months beforehand, you do a second batch to allow for the folk who wind up cancelling.

Re last year: even allowing for the fact that they've time-limited the Magic Connection this time, the Magic Connection has been ballsing up. So yes, something has gone wrong.