Re: Pottermore v.10
 

This is one of the few reasons I would consider it justified, but think of the people that went on each of the seven days and succeeded in the quill challenge each day and took one of the spots for no reason at all? Hmm...

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

My Pottermore page now says "Once you have friends you can follow what they do" or something along those lines LOL But my friends list was not erased, so it looks like there are still glitches after the technical work they have done.

Just a comment on the side (which I hate myself for forgetting to mention on the survey): I wish magical plants recieved the same attention that creatures do! Jo didn't write an extra book on them but it's also not listed in the chapters of Pottermore! I find it a terrible shame... I mean, she doesn't even have to write new material on the magical plants, but at least make it possible for us to get a list of them on Pottermore... *sigh*

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Meh, I haven't noticed any differences in Pottermore ... it's just the same. The chapters are just as slow, my ingredients still don't regenerate, my friends list still freezes ... =(

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Pottermore is back online. I hope they're fixed your potion glitch! If not, I'd report it again, and if they haven't fixed it when Beta ends, you may have to.

Dueling is still down. The only change I've spotted is that my House rank has gone down 4 places.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I don't get it. I've been properly logging in the for the whole past week and nothing has changed. It hasn't even been down like they said. I hope duelling will be back soon, and more features available in the future (hopefully interaction with friends)

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

It has been down for me, exactly the days they mentioned. Also they say that they did hardware updates mostly and that you wouldn't see any visible changes (except speed etc which I do notice)

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

For me it hasn't been down o.O Agreed, there is an obvious change at the speed of the site :nod:

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

If Pottermore releases the next book online each year (minimum) then we are all gonna be so old when it finishes, I will be about twenty two!! :O :D

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I don't think (or rather hope) they will release one per year. If they do, they seriously underestimate the attention span of their members. Personally I think two a year would be wiser. But we will see.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

That probably explains why my house ranking has gone down 4 places while Pottermore has been offline. Some must have had access, and among those, Eagles brewing potions (unless techs have been working with dueling, although judging by a huge increase in a Gryffindor score I noticed last week, they seem to be using accounts of that house more than the others).

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I hope that, in addition to fixing the technical bugs, they'll also carefully review our detailed survey feedback and make some substantial changes content-wise - before they end the beta period.

If they don't - I hope that some creative game designers get some venture capital and set up a HP MMORPG - guaranteed success imo (provided they do it whilst the franchise is still hot). Just saying.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

OMG I'll be like, 23 xD Good think Hes is right!

Agreed! :nod: That makes sense!

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Hahaha, everyone is so young! If Pottermore does a book-a-year release, I'll be in my thirties by the time this is over.

As for Pottermore, not noticing any differences, either in speed or anywhere else, but hopefully others are.

Sphereness, have you heard of the ARG that the makers of PanemOctober have planned for Harry Potter that's coming out next summer? Fanmade, and seems built for role-playing. It's not my thing, but for people who want more RP, I think something like that will fill the void moreso than Pottermore ever will; Pottermore wasn't designed to be an MMORPG, and I don't think they'll ever make it into one.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

That sounds brilliant - I'll look it up! Thanks :)

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I haven't been on Pottermore in weeks because my potions weren't working, but I thought I'd try today after the downtime and my potions are working ... sort of. Before, it didn't recognise when I'd finished the first set of instructions so when I went away and come back it would say that I wasn't brewing anything. Now, I managed to complete both sets of instructions perfectly, it told me I had successfully brewed the potion, but when I went on my notifications is said that the potion had failed and I hadn't been awarded any house points :argh: Now I'm brewing another to see if this one'll work, here's hoping... :shrug:

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I just don't know how they haven't fixed dueling yet. It can't possibly be that difficult is it? They have had the site down for three days on no progress on it? Seems very odd. Disappointed(even though I expected it) to not have dueling back, how much time to they need to fix it?

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

That's so old. ;)

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Well, it looks like Pottermore finally moderated a whole bunch of comments from my first day on the site. :elaugh:

Here are my comments that were removed for not following the moderation guideines:

On Wizarding Money:
Comment: Yes... pictures of the money. :)

On Hedwig:
Comment: What was the significance of the name in the History of Magic book?

On Hagrid:
Comment: I love that detail about Hagrid clutching the umbrella tightly. So funny!

On chapter 1:
Comment: I think sound effects may be better than music here. But also think that some rendering of the characters would help.

On Voldemort:
Comment: I think we need images of the characters along with the descriptions.


Those comments just look so.... threatening.... don't they? :evil:

So... any theories on why these comments might have been removed?

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Yes. You used words with more than one syllable. They have a moderation program in effect, and it doesn't seem to automatically approve big words it doesn't recognize :rotfl:

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

:rotfl:

But wouldn't the software be how the comments get kicked into moderation? These comments were specifically removed after moderation. :wow:

In other words... by a human.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

They don't like big words..? :hmm:

I posted:

when I got on the site at the end of August, and they only got approved last week. I'm pretty sure that was because I used a happy face though...:rotfl:

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I've been told by some who write lots of Pottermore comments that there's a program in place which combs through the comments, and if it recognizes everything and approves it, the comment appears almost immediately, and no human is required. However, if the comment contains a word such as "rendering," which is perhaps unfamiliar to the software, the comment is placed into a moderation queue, where is has to be approved by a human, and the comment may be delayed before appearing.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

This might cheer you up ~ I'll be 60!!! :lol: And so will alot of people. :rotfl:

But I'll still be here waiting for more backstory from JKR. Constant Vigilance! :agree:

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Very threatening! :) I really am at a loss for why these would be disallowed. Perhaps the reason the last two were rejected is because you suggested renderings of the characters, when JKR/Pottermore has said they want to keep characters' appearances as ambiguous as possible so as not to infringe on readers' interpretations. As for the others, perhaps they simply did not add anything to the conversation; but I do not see why that would prevent them from being posted, as over half the comments I have seen are simple responses/comments on the text.

What worries me, though, is that if these comments were rejected by the moderation then it seems that Pottermore will continue to heavily limit interaction among the users. I understand they do not want it to become a social network site or forums, but for all the emphasis they place on friends and comments I would think they would have laxer rules about commenting.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Yes. I undersand. But these comments were specifically disapproved after moderation by a human.

Theories?

I think you may be onto something here. I think most of these comments were responses to comments made by other posters, rather than comments made strictly in isolation by me.

However, I think other comments of mine that have responded to other posters have been approved before. So I'm just not finding much consistency.

I saw the list of comments that had been disapproved after moderation when I logged on this morning, and the first thing I thought was: "If moderation is so seemingly arbitrary, why post at all?"

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Including me! :rotfl:

Same here. I have seen some of my comments go immediately through and others -- using similar language except for perhaps an addition of punctuation, such as a dash -- get caught for moderation and then disapproved. Makes little sense.

It also seems that such an approach does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling about any type of commentary/communication system being implemented in the future. First of all, it runs contrary to what JKR outlined the site would be in the first place. Second, it seems that "they" (especially Sony) need to make money off of this somehow, and there would likely be a need for sales of e-books to be offered over any type of running commentary system.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I have not even bothered to comment on the site at all, mainly because of the moderation issues I keep hearing about. Frankly I didn't feel it was worth my time to type something if it wasn't going to appear. I am at a loss as to why ccollinsmith's comments wouldn't be allowed. Unfortunately I forgot to include this problem in my comments at the end of the beta survey.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

lol, all this talk of age is hilarious! If they release the books the way you folks say they might, then I'd be 43 when they're done...

Anyways, after creating a few wands for some clients of mine, I went ahead and took some real spruce I had in the woodpile and created my very own Pottermore wand. It's the one PM says Ollivander chose for me.

http://www.teachanddiscover.net/wands/shop/SUP1075.jpg

I still need to put the stain and finish on it, but it's otherwise done. I'm waiting for the wand to settle a bit after I put the Unicorn Core inside it (no joke, I really did...). I'll give it a mixed cherry and golden stain finish on it, and put a few coats of beezwax on top. A nice buffing later and I may post a finished pic. I also didn't like the way the wand twisted and bent in PM, so I left mine straight. Spruce and Unicorn Hair, 10 3/4 inches, hard!

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Yeah, I really laughed at the concept of calling Pottermore a "social networking site" when the Sony survey mentioned it and told them that, given the current system, there's no point in having social interaction at all except for dueling. It's completely stupid: they should at least implement a PM system or a forum for people over a certain age.

OT: I wish I could actually get a wand in my wand-wood, but elder (as in actual elder, and not box elder, which is ash) is apparently hard to get.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Wow :wow: do you really make wands? That's incredible:D I wish I had one of those...

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I have a supplier for elderberry, which is as close as it's gonna get basically...

Not supposed to sell or pitch here... it's against the rules... but can I simply say, "Check out my sig?"

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Oh well.. I've checked your site and I only want more to have one. But providing that I live out of the states... It'd probably be too expensive. But your wands are incredible. Keep working like that:d

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Huh, I've always been able to follow what my friends are doing . . .

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Hi, y'all!
Not sure if this is completely on-topic for this thread (I read the rules and it was still a little unclear to me) so please correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyway, I see a lot of people on Twitter and other places saying that Pottermore has changed quite a lot for them. I got on just now and found that it isn't really that much different. I went to some of the moments/chapters but didn't see anything that sticks out that wasn't there when I did it before. I was just wondering if anyone else's experience is the same or if most people have noticed big changes. Thanks!

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Same here. I keep melting my cauldrons (clumsy me, I've already had to buy two new cauldrons) and I'd like to try my hand at duelling.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I have not noticed any difference either... Nothing new except a bit more stringent on the moderation of posts and such in the common room...

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Even more stringent moderation of posts? Boy oh boy. Mind you, I never got why some posts were held for moderation, couldn't determine the reason. I stopped posting in the Common Room because I never got to see my posts, and very rarely saw a direct response.

I visited Pottermore a couple hours ago and didn't notice any difference. I can't tell about the Common Room because I didn't post there. Just checked up on my friends, got and sent a couple of gifts. Stayed away from Potions. :scared:

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

When the site was down for maintenance for a few days, that was my best hope of getting my potion glitch fixed(it's been frozen since August 27).

However, my dreams were shattered...it's still frozen.

I think I'll probably just have to make a new account when the site opens to new accounts.

*sigh*

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Does anyone know, by the way, how long it takes Pottermore to approve a drawing? I submitted one around the dawn of time - but I never heard any more about it. The relevant box on my profile just says "you haven't submitted any drawings yet". Does anyone know?

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I'm still very dissapointed that pottermore has not approved my art yet, even though others have.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Why not? It approves of mine every one and a half day

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Ok cool.

I'm not artistic so I haven't tried to upload any fan art but my guess is maybe it didn't get through? It's hard to say whether it just wasn't approved or it's a bug.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I did too... My guess that's Pottermore's way of saying "denied!" I looked at the terms of service afterward and deemed that my "drawing" done in Photoshop might have had some identifying information on it...

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

One thing that had bothered me was someone on another site had posted about how a comment that "Dumbledore and McGonagall would have been a cute couple," was approved, but their comment saying "I thought McGonagall was a lesbian until I read this" was denied for having inappropriate content. It made me wonder how they're going to handle any commentary on Dumbledore's character in DH.

I haven't commented on Pottermore because I just don't see the point. There's nothing to say except, "Oh, cool!" It's not like you can really share ideas.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Ah - that might be it then! I used Photoshop as well. I didn't realise that was against their rules. Still, it would have been nice to get a message saying "your art has been rejected" or something similar rather than just....nothing.

I'll try submitting a scan of a pen+paper drawing. See if that works.

I imagine that Sony does not want to associate its brand with any socially controversial issues. So they resort to censoring such topics.

Their aim may be to be neutral - but by not allowing homosexuality to be discussed as a normal topic they are in fact taking a very hard-line conservative stance (in my opinion of course).

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Well, so have I! Until Pottermore went into "healing". But that error was short lived and my friends' actions are back on my gateway page. (not that it really matters what those people do, anyway, since I have no clue who they are!)

Anyway, all this talk about being old at mid twenties got me a little worried! At least until I read that other "over 30" are on this thread too! haha I know we are a minority but we are young at heart! ;)

The site seems to be a little faster and (hooray) I can now see the videos! Wish they would open other spells for practice even without actually duelling...

About the artwork people submitt, I have heard it takes a long time. I have also noticed that some images were uploaded to the wrong chapter/person/object. Wonder if they will ever even bother to fix that, since there are so many other major things to fix.

Can't wait for the site to open to the public so that my husband can get sorted...

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Last chance for people to do the beta survey today. It closes at 11.00am BST. Which is in two hours.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Do we know when will it actually open to everybody?

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

No, they haven't given us a date as of yet.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

So, I finally did submit my feedback late last week. Almost spot on a thousand words. For the few of you who might actually be interested, I covered:

• The impossibility of having any kind of conversation on Pottermore.
• Points imbalance between potion-brewing and duelling.
• The aforementioned issue with the house points score calculation.

I figure the other issues I could name would almost certainly be covered essentially verbatim by a zillion other users, so I restricted myself to those that I had some special comment about. I did reference the potions loop, but only to illustrate one way that I might have had a hand in getting myself out of it.

We'll see if anything ever comes of it.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

What? Why then? What's the deal with Pottermore not liking photoshop? All my art that I scan and tweek is on photoshop. This is so unfair!

I have ye to recieve a "denied" statement though.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I submitted a blank ms paint sheet titled Harry in his Invisibility Cloak and they denied it. lol.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Hahahhaha :rotfl:

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

That is just too funny for words. :rotfl: They should've accepted it.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Heh. Maybe you should have titled it "Ron in Harry's Invisibility Cloak."

By the way, did they explicitly give you a denial notice? Or did it just not show up?

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I haven't done much Potion-brewing, so can someone tell me if this is a bug?

I purchased the unicorn horn to try to brew Antidote to Common Poisons (21 Galleons!) From the Pottermore wiki, I understand that this is supposed to give you 55 "portions" of unicorn horn. However, after 1 attempt at brewing the potion (which failed on the second-to-last step - stupid clockwise vs. counterclockwise!), the unicorn horn vanished from my inventory, so in essence I spent 21 Galleons on one attempt at brewing a potion.

Does it now cost 21 Galleons for one attempt at Antidote To Common Poisons, or is this a glitch? If so, how to report to Pottermore? (I'm guessing the Help-->Other-->What's next--> route, but is there a faster way?)

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I've bought the unicorn horn on Pottermore and it is lasting a long time. I've successfully brewed 15 Antidote potions and still have 39 pieces of unicorn horn left. So it sounds like you have a glitch. You can try contacting Pottermore and see if they can check into it for you.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

they denied it. It took forever, but they eventually sent me the denial.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Thanks. I assumed that it either had to be a glitch or that I was missing a place where you could collect it. It's the first actual glitch I've had; I guess I'm lucky. At least it didn't stick me in a loop.

While I'm on this topic, any tips for stirring counter-clockwise? I grab the spoon and make what I think are counter-clockwise motions, but I couldn't get the counter to move past 1.

(I'd just go back to doing Cure For Boils, which I can do really well, but I'd like to be able to do at least 1 of every potion.)

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I want to make a potion :( the site update didn't fix my potions glitch. I reckon a lot of other Gryffindors have a potions glitch because our points have barely been going up for awhile now.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

What I did at first was to grab the handle of the spoon, and move it in an actual circle (not an ellipse) as wide as the mouth of the cauldron. That should work, assuming you are careful to move it in the proper direction. After you get used to that, you can relax the circle and flatten it into an ellipse. However, I still move it in an ellipse that is considerably "taller" than the foreshortened mouth of the cauldron.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

You can move it wider. I always move my physical mouse in a wide circle, with the cursor reaching the sides of the screen, and it always moves.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Well, yes, I didn't mean exactly as wide as the cauldron. I do encircle it. But I don't have enough room to swing the cursor that far without changing the speed of the cursor (which I don't want to do). :)

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

The Pottermore Beta survey is now available to those who wish to take it in French, German, Italian or Spanish.

http://insider.pottermore.com/

Not sure why this wasn't done at the same time as the one in English, or why they didn't let us know another one would be coming out. Maybe it was part of our feedback?

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Well it's the same one as far as I can see. Maybe they wanted to split the workload. I presume they have translators or outsource the translation work that needs to be done.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Definitely. I just wished they had let us know the survey would be available in other languages in the future, so those more comfortable with a language other than English would know to hold off, instead of trying to muddle through the English version. I just think it's more fair to them.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Yes, they should have said so of course. They aren't always that precise in their updates, something to work on IMO.

But since you can do the survey multiple times hopefully people with language problems will do it again.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

They also updated their Beta Update page:

So, the fixes from a few days ago seem to be server upgrades. But they have other updates in mind that will work on other aspects of the site. I wish they were more direct on what they might be....

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Well, they said it would be mostly hardware upgrades. Perhaps system updates, too.

The problem with being direct about it is that it would probably elicit a whole slew of questions they couldn't answer. "You said you were going to improve X! When are you going to improve X? You said it would happen Thursday, and here it is already Thursday evening and it hasn't improved yet! Aren't you on British time? I'm only on Eastern Standard, so it must already be Friday over there. Nooooooooooooooooooo!"

So coy is safer. :)

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Well, they don't have to give specific dates. I know that dueling is coming back eventually, and that's good enough for me. Sure, I'd like it sooner than later, but at least they said that it will happen. I know what they are planning on implementing, and plan on being surprised when it does re-appear.

I'm more just curious what advice they've taken from us and plan on implementing or fixing. Dates aren't really important, I just would like to know what things may be added or fixed in the near future. That's just me, though. :)

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Thanks for the tip. I've run into a bug a couple times that appears to be related to clicking too quickly: if I click or move the mouse too quickly, the animations screw up and the spoon (cauldron stirrer?) will no longer be in the place where it appears to be, so then I have to try to find it by grasping at various points around the cauldron. The same thing has happened with the mortar and pestle: I click, but the mortar animation gets frozen although the counter continues to move. The wand animation also usually involves lightning without the wand actually moving up - is that another glitch? If so, I'll report it to Pottermore.

At least the discovery that I can hit "refresh" to restart has saved me from exploding a third cauldron while on the second step.

As for the survey, it would've made more sense for them to at least announce that they'd be releasing it in multiple languages. For some things, it's better if the Insider doesn't try to get specific (*cough* opening dates *cough*) but for other things, the communication should be clearer.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

:lol:
I agree. They've already disappointed a lot of people by pushing back the date when Pottermore will open to the public. I think they've learned not to make promises that people will count on, when they can't follow through.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I know dates aren't that important (since they're fungible), but it wasn't nearly as funny to think about the likely response without the dates. :)

But even without dates, my experience with highly popular software releases is that people will start bugging you about it anyway. (Even only moderately popular releases.) It may be annoying to us who are waiting for things to be fixed, but them's the breaks.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Just been on pottermore to find a message telling me that a comment I posted in my common room two weeks ago hasn't been approved by the moderators. I don't even remember posting it. Here's what the comment said:

Comment: 'my potions have been glitched for two weeks now :('

??????? :hmm:

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

One overhaul I really think Pottermore needs to make is the comments section. I understand they want it to have strong moderation - heck, we even had to select our user names from a list - but I don't think the current system is working for everyone.

Perhaps they need to have some mods online in real time, reading over the posts?

Based on the issue with comments, the "out of the blue" announcement that the Beta survey is now available in different languages, etc., I'm thinking that Pottermore wasn't very well thought out. I understand that this is Beta, and they're using us to test the site, but I think some of this should be intuitive.

My personal opinion is that it's a money issue. We aren't generating any income yet, so they're doing the minimum. Once the e-books are available, I suspect more staff will be hired and most - if not all - of the issues will be resolved.

BTW - I've only one made one comment on Pottermore. Once i was sorted into Ravenclaw, I posted that "I feel as if I've come home." I made the comment on August 15th. My comment was approved Tuesday, November 8th.

ETA

Now that i think about it, the Beta Survey was probably not done in a very effective way at all.

I think, if you're going to ask multiple choice questions, in order to get the most accurate percentages, you only want the survey to be taken one time by each member you can get to take it. The Beta survey link could be accessed by anyone, whether or not they even had a Pottermore account, the survey could be taken more than once by anyone, and not all of the members may have been aware that the survey was available in the first place. If the staff is looking for accurate percentages on the multiple choice questions, the survey fails at this, IMHO.

Then Pottermore announced the survey was closing on a certain date, which will get those who are more comfortable with a language other than English to take the survey, and depending on their English skills, they may very well have mis-read the questions, furthering the problem. Plus, it would make it harder for them to add their opinions.

And then Pottermore, after closing the survey, re-opens it for those who prefer a different language.

If I had been the one doing the survey, I would have created a link to the survey on the top of each Pottermore account, and I would have something posted on Insider, asking people to log into their accounts and take the survey. I may have even sent out emails.

If the site is in a different language other than English, once the survey was ready in that language, the link to take the survey would appear on their account.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

When I went to Potions after Pottermore reopened, I found that I'm brewing Forgetfullness potion although so far I've only practiced Cure for Boils!!!!!!!

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

So it's getting close to being 3 months now that my potion has been frozen(since August 27th).

I've lost all hope that I'll ever be able to make a potion again at this point. It's just depressing each time I login to Pottermore.

Should I just delete my account?

Looking at the points I earned in the 2 days I had access to Pottermore before my potion froze is getting depressing....looking at that number 42 for months is starting to make me feel lazy and unsuccessful at earning points on the site even though it isn't my fault that I can't earn them. It just looks so bad I just want to delete the account at this point. It's just depressing because there is nothing else to do on the site.

Your position: 39,951

And even though I only had 2 days on the site in which I was able to earn points before my potion froze....I still have more points than the majority of people in my house. What is this? Do most people in my house just not care at all about earning points? In some ways I get annoyed that a lot of other people in my house could probably earn points if they wanted to and their accounts are working perfectly....and here I am wanting to earn points and I physically can't because of the glitch I've been in for nearly 3 months....and I may be patient....but it's really really getting to me at this point. It's just so frustrating to not be able to earn points for that long, and even more frustrating when hardly anyone in your house seems to care about earning points and their accounts are probably perfectly fine! *sigh*

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

I wasn't able to register onto Pottermore, although much of that can be attributed to a four year hiatus from reading the series. I felt void after finishing the book, and than the girl I had dated at the time had no interest in the series. She was a hipster, didn't want to read the books because everyone else had read them.

You shouldn't delete your account Kathleen. I'm sure that eventually Pottermore will work itself out. You might regret deleting your account when everything works out.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Kathleen,

If you delete your account, you'll regret it if dueling comes back up, especially as no one actually knows when the site will open to public registration (and even then it might be weeks or months before the public actually gets in, if they stagger opening like they did with the Beta.) So don't delete!

Also, to give you a perspective: it's not just Hufflepuff where rankings are high with relatively few House points. 4 days ago, I had 44 house points and was still ranked in the top 20% of my House (I'd never tried brewing, and dueling's been down for longer than I've had access.) Now, I've been brewing a bit, and have 179 House points.

With 179 points, I'm at position 7,743 out of 167,688 in Ravenclaw, so it's not just that Hufflepuffs aren't doing anything. It just shows you that most people are there for the new information and not for the House Cup: they might've tried brewing Cure for Boils once, but most people don't care enough or don't have the time to be constantly brewing. Even now, I just started playing around with potions a couple days ago, and I'll probably get burned out on it in a bit - it's a useful distraction for when I'm not feeling well enough to do anything else and know I'll be hanging around the house, but if I'm going out, there's no way to pause a timer, and I generally have other things to be doing if I'm feeling well. Also, it gets frustrating to run into bugs: I had the purchasing bug described above, have dealt with the "you put the lavender in the wrong container!" when I know I didn't, and one time when I went back to do the second step of a potion (it said 100% complete), and instead of taking me to step 2, it took me back to the beginning. If someone's trying that for the first time and it happens to them, that may be the last time they do potions.

But anyway, don't delete your account! (If anything, help me out and send me some Flobberworm Mucus! I exploded a couple cauldrons before I got the hang of things, so my Galleon supply may run a bit low.) ;)

Edit: About people and points, I have 69 friends on Pottermore, and only 4 of them have 1000+ points. If I graphed it (which I'm not going to), there's one person who has 4 points, a lot with 30-50 points (which is about what you'd expect from getting all the objects and maybe doing a potion), and then a handful with more. I don't know if the people with 1000+ points have been dueling at all, or if they're just very dedicated brewers.

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

At least one of them is/was just a dedicated brewer. :)

I did duel, but that was obviously only at the beginning, and I dueled maybe twenty times? My record was probably something like 13-5-2 (there are ties), something like that. Of course, that's probably twenty times more than most people.

As with many things like this, the points distribution follows a power-law distribution. A few people with a ton of points, and a ton of people with few points. I might take a survey of people, to see what their rankings are with various numbers of points, and see if I can't figure out the power-law parameters.

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Here's an interesting data point: at 179 points, I was at position 7,743 in Ravenclaw; with 190, I'm 7,247. Also, the point update doesn't reflect immediately: right after brewing, I checked the Great Hall, and my position had actually fallen a place (7,744.) It was only about half an hour later that I noticed the updated rank. Also, I wonder how Pottermore handles ties: obviously, there are going to be people with exactly the same number of points. Is everyone with 179 points in Ravenclaw given a ranking of 7,743 (as in, you're in a 1000-person tie for this position), or does Pottermore have some sort of ordering for it? I have no idea how you'd find out, short of finding and surveying people of the same House with the same number of points, but I wonder - is there really anyone who goes to the Great Hall and finds that they're dead last, as in position 167,697 out of 167,697?

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I'm ranked 85th and have over 2,300 points, all from brewing. I only dueled twice, and leah49 beat me both times.

One thing I've noticed are some of the member's points jumping up very quickly. I believe there are techs working on pottermore in the background, who actually are dueling. They seem to be choosing the Gryffindor accounts. I watched one gain 1,000 points in a 24 hour period.

Kathleen Malfoy, since Ravenclaw and Slytherin are close in total point range, we have much more of an incentive to brew. That being said, I still have more friends in the 50 or less points total than any other category. If it were me, I'd report the potions loop again - Help -> Other -> What's next? -> Need more help? - and if it isn't corrected when Pottermore comes out of Beta, I'd be tempted to get a new account and delete the old one as well. I'm sorry you're stuck in a rut and can't help your house!! :huggles: If it helps, we're just considered "Beta" and are testers. After all the initial cheating I saw (and most of the holes have since been plugged up) plus techs using accounts, I don't see the group point totals as being truly accurate.

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They probably don't compute rankings on the fly because it's too I/O-intensive. (The servers are surely more than up to the task of computing the rankings very rapidly, if they have the numbers in local memory.) My guess is that the rankings are defined roughly the way you suggest, but they would not stand up to close scrutiny, in that you couldn't attach very rigorous semantics to them and expect them to be consistent at the same time. What you saw was part of that, I suspect.

Fortunately, identifying the power-law parameters wouldn't depend on the rankings being rigorously determined. A vaguely accurate set of rankings would be good enough.

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I got sorted into Hufflepuff on Pottermore, too! So did my mom <3.
My wand is Red Oak, unicorn core, 14 1/2 inches or so.. slightly yielding. My brother is sure once he joins that he'll be a Gryffindor, but who knows. :)

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Not all witches and wizards grow up to be excellent potion brewers. I, for one, can't stand brewing potions as I don't have the patience for it. Now arithmancy, charms, astronomy, and defense against the dark arts are interesting! :-)

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I have not been able to experience Pottermore at all. First, there was early registration that was always closed when I visited the site. Now it says that Pottermore is in Beta and I can't get any more info out of it. When is Pottermore going to be accessible to those of us who couldn't register (or whatever it is we were supposed to do)?

Re: Pottermore v.10
 

Originally it was supposed to be sometime in October; now it looks like they don't have any definite date.

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Here's what they wrote on the Pottermore Insider website:

Link

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So... no firm date as to when Pottermore will be open for registration.

Thanks for the answers!

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Okay I won't delete it but sometimes I just feel so annoyed and upset after all these months of not being able to earn any points that I just want to rage delete it.

Also, yeah I know a lot of people don't have time to make potions since they take hours, or at least they used to, not sure what it's like anymore since my potion has been frozen since it was still on the old system. I haven't had a chance at the new system yet.

When they took hours though you could go off and do something else and then come back to it. So it's not like you actually had to sit at the computer for hours a day.

Anyway that's interesting about Ravenclaw although I do still feel mostly like I'm in the house with the least amount of people who care about earning points....Hufflepuff is way behind after all. I'm not the kind of person who always needs to win/always be first but I can't really tolerate always being last and never winning. So it just frustrates me that I can't earn more points before Hufflepuff falls even further behind and has no chance what so ever of ever getting out of last place.

Besides Hufflepuff has the horrible reputation of always being last and it bothers me that it's coming true on the site. I just want to prove everyone wrong about Hufflepuff but as long as we continue to be last everyone who views the points on Pottermore will continue to believe that we're the house with the least talented people.

Anyway I'm not trying to force people to earn points or anything, it's not like I'd be CONSTANTLY earning points even if I could or something but it certainly is annoying not to be able to earn any for about 3 months now and watching the house I was sorted into fall way way behind the others, giving us more of that horrible reputation people associate with us.

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As for the new potions system, I never used the old one, but brewing times are still 80-100 minutes (80 = 3 point potion, 85 = 7 point potion, 95 = 9 point potion, 100 = 11 point potion) and you can go away or log out and come back while brewing and the timer will keep running.

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After a long break, today I brewed a potion and it worked well. I never really had any problems with potions. I leave the tab open and go do something else, then come back and finish it. Anyway, nothing really seems to have changed since the beta survey. I do hope they are saving all the changes for the "grand opening" wich I suspect will happen in 2012...

When I opened my account today, though, there were owls about some old old old comments I had made and the ones that got denied were about trending #Hufflepuffpride on twitter (so you have an idea of how old those were!) and one about the "potency of spells" lol I guess the wording was unfortunate, but I wanted to ask if all spells go from 0-100 or if there are spells with over 100 (how should I phrase this?) strength? power? Anyway, I find it laughable that they are even spending time going through over a month old comments, since at this point, no one even cares if they get approved or not.

The comments that do go up the wall, though, seem to have boiled down to "good morning, all", "good night" etc... and people have (at least in my house) started signing their comments with nicknames (not sure what to think of that). So it has become a (rather boring) chat room with no real content, since all the questions have been asked and people are now only brewing out of routine and to climb up the house classification.

Still think Pottermore is genius and the images are great and the new content is brilliant (also the spell movements!!!) But hope they are working hard in making it cooler. :)

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Are the House banners out of order in the Great hall? I thought it was supposed to go Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin; not Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Slytherin.

ETA: I just noticed that the emblem on the letter places Gryffindor and Slytherin on the top quarters and Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw on the bottom. That looks odd, and contrary to the order that Harry noted them in the book (unless he started in the top left and read them counter-clockwise. What's the normal way to read a heraldic emblem?)

ETA2: Yay for the internet; I was able to look it up. One should read across the top, and then across the bottom row. Double checked SS/PS:

So, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw should be the top row (fire and air)
and Hufflepuff and Slytherin should be the bottom row (earth and water).

So I think they did get the tables in the right order after all, its just me remembering wrong, but they got the coat of arms all messed up. It should go in the same order the tables are set up, actually.

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A few weeks ago, I was a rapid potion brewer and common room visitor. I used to watch and talk on the common room A LOT. Basically, I found out that the members on the Great Hall leaderboard with the highest points, came onto the common room and admitted they were cheating, and were very smug about it.
I wasn't actually there when this happened, but I believe it and I think it's the same for all the other houses (I'm in Slytherin, btw). I don't think there's techs, personally, I just think people are cheating. =|

I haven't brewed a potion in ages. I got over 1000 points, and then I just thought, "what am I doing?" I mean, I was literally spending all day brewing, I was arranging my life around my potions! I don't want to be like that! I was so intent on 'becoming a high-scorer' I just forgot that I actually have a life to live outside Pottermore - I have school, and exams in January ... so I gave it up.
Plus, I was constantly mad at being cheated out of my points ... I can't tell you how many times I went back to the second page of instructions only to be booted back to the first page. Pfft.

Kathleen, your situation sounds horrible and I'm so sorry. It really is so unfair, but I agree with the others in that there's no way you should delete your account! It might get fixed in the future, you never know, and besides you'll be able to access duelling on it anyway when it comes back =)

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I got into the dreaded potions loop tonight when I was brewing Herbicide. After the first part had finished brewing, I went back to it to do the second part, and got the first page of instructions again instead of the second page. I tried blowing up the cauldron to get out of it, but that didn't work. Logging off, closing the browser and going back in again didn't do anything either. So I decided to do the second part of the potion anyway, even though it gave me the first page of instructions. That worked. My potion failed, but at least I got out of the loop. I hope that doesn't happen again. :no:

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You're all making me jealous...hopefully the site will be open to the 'public' soon enough. I'm curious to find out more about all the characters and everything else that J.K might provide information on.

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I think that's a wise choice. I know many people like to talk about high rankings etc, but who knows what they might do in the future? They might suddenly put everyone back to zero when the Beta is over, so why worry about it so much?

I honestly don't see how they can ignore these Potions problems. They could have it fixed tomorrow, or it might take months for them to rethink the website, but they aren't going to leave it like this because it is just bad public relations for the whole Potter franchise.

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You're probably right - they may not be techs.

On the bright side, they really have closed many of the cheating loopholes. Currently, only a very small percentage are cheating, I think. As far as I know, the person needs multiple accounts and time to brew lots of potions on those multiple accounts, or blow up cauldrons. People used to simply duel themselves, or have points added by failing potions.

I've not heard of anyone else trying to brew the second part to get out of the potions loop. I'm going to suggest it to a few people and see if this ends the loop for them. You may have found the key.

My guess is that all the points will be reset once Beta ends. It wouldn't surprise me if the House Cup isn't even awarded, since we're supposed to be on Pottermore to test the site.

People brew for different reasons, and not all are related to rankings and such.

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One of the reasons that I did that was in the very slim hope that I could still earn the points. ;)

Let us know if that solved the potions loop problem for anyone else. :)

I like to brew Potions, even though Gryffindor stubbornly remains in third place for house points. :grumble: It gives me something to do when I'm just hanging around a computer, doing nothing or avoiding what I'm supposed to be doing.

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Do you think maybe they're not ignoring the potion problems, but they just don't have a solution? (sad if that's true)