The Upgrade Appears to be a Downgrade

Image via WikipediaWell, Pottermore is back up, but so far the only new thing I see (besides the return of wizard duel!) is the return of overloaded servers. I really thought they had resolved that one after getting so many complains from the beta group.

I'm starting to wonder if Sony should just turn Pottermore over to Zynga (oh horrors!) Seriously, each Zynga game has millions of users, while there are as of today only 666,703 registered users of Pottermore. Yet it's Pottermore having these server issues.

Very frustrating, but it's too much fun pretending I'm a student at Hogwarts to give up on Pottermore.

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Pottermore Down for Upgrades

Image by jox. via FlickrSorry for not posting for a while, unfortunately there wasn't much new happening in Pottermore for the past couple of weeks. When I tried to log on yesterday though, the site said they were down for a few days to make a number of changes based on beta-user feedback.

I've seen a lot of great comments by beta-user and I hope some of the ideas mentioned get implemented. A favorite seems to be the ability to fight the mountain troll in Book 1 - that would be great! And many, many people have been clamoring for the return of wizard dueling.

So, although Pottermore will be down for a few days, I can't wait to what's new when the site goes live again. Stay tuned!

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The Sorting Hat

Image via WikipediaFrom the site:

Congratulations

WitchNight127

The Sorting Hat has placed you in

Gryffindor

I can't tell you my surprise at being Sorted into Gryffindor. For years I have considered myself a Ravenclaw - I even have the socks to prove it.

The Sorting Ceremony is quite interesting. You are shown seven sets of images and are asked to choose one image from each set.

Your results are calculated and voila! You are Sorted into your house.

I have heard a few people mention that they were a
Hat Stall - in other words, the Hat took their choice into
account by showing them images from two different houses and asking them to choose.

I, however, was not a Hat Stall, and so my choice of Ravenclaw was not taken into account.


Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with Gryffindor, it just gave me a surprise (and a bit of an identity crisis and wardrobe issues as I scurried out to get some scarlet and gold socks).

But, as one of my fellow Gryffindors pointed out, we are "as clever as Hermione, as loyal and fun as Ron and as brave as Harry". Thanks @SecretWizard7 for that inspiring tweet!

I am now a proud Gryffindor!

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Beta Extended!

The Pottermore Insider blog posted today that the Pottermore beta period has been extended to the end of October in order to work out some issues and to collect more feedback from the beta group.

The blog reports that, with 1 million users now granted access to Pottermore and 55 million page views, user interaction has been "phenomenal".

Well, Pottermore is pretty awesome so the page views don't surprise me. The Unauthorzied Trio accesses (or tries to access!) Pottermore every day.

Unfortunately, the level of interaction has led to slow loading times and times when we haven't been able to access Pottermore at all. This will be even more of a problem once everyone is let onto Pottermore unless a solution is found before open access is granted.

So, I'm glad that's something they're going to address, even if it means a later general access date.

The blog post mentions that beta users will be surveyed to determine which aspects of the site need to be enhanced, and which aspects need to be simplified.

And I'm happy to report that apparently Wizard Dueling will be available again soon!

You can read the entire blog post here

Chapter 15: Into the Forbidden Forest

Image via WikipediaHover over the spider web and the spider will climb the tree, hover over the bird and she'll fly away. You can also collect wolfsbane and unicorn blood from this screen but you'll have to search closely!

Move as far in as you can and you'll see something frightening.

Our first week on Pottermore

Image by Genevieve719 via FlickrWell, I finally got my owl last weekend - September 24th to be exact! Apparently those of us who made the beta-testing pool with a Yahoo mail address were put on the bottom of the guest list. Oh well.

The first thing I can say about Pottermore is that I love it - mostly.

There are some bugs that need to be worked out, it needs some music and/or dialog (the silence is deafening, trust me!) and it is sloooooow.

I hope that when Pottermore goes live they will be using more servers or it's going to be too painfully slow for me. Patience is not a virtue that I have.

The second thing I can say is, it really is better than I thought it would be. There's a lot to discover in Pottermore. More of that to come in later posts.

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