What are you doing right now?

[EndOfTheEarth]

Besides posting on here and replying to this thread. Original credit for this goes back to Fate and Nathan on MX.

[Mudkip]

My god, Pottermore. Will I have to wait until October or are you going to actually send my Welcome Letter?

[o0_flying high_0o]

Ugh. I know how you feel. 

 

*waitingwaitingwaiting* 

[Contradiction]

I find it extremely amusing that out of all of the rhetorical terms our class was assigned to look up/find examples of, I got oxymoron and paradox. 

 

Y'know, the contradictions.

[Omega]

Pottermore:

 

Not really impressed. Okay, so only Book One is up at the moment, so it could get better, but meh. The new information is good (especially McGonagall, and the classlist!), and the art they've got is awesome. But it seems like they've gone half way to an interactive role-playing site, but tried really hard NOT to be an RPG-style game, and are consequently in a really awkward place.

You follow through the story, yes, and interact with the pages by collecting items and galleons - but there's really very little point to it! Only occasionally are you required to find something to be given information - and you're made aware that something's there to find. At some points you're stopped - ie. you have to buy the stuff off the Hogwarts list before getting a wand (which is incredibly tedious and involves much clicking back and forth, with very little reward in the way of new information), you have to get a wand before moving on further (this, however, has more information with the meaning of wand cores, woods, and length/other characteristics), and be sorted before you can move through the Hogwarts chapters etc. but otherwise, why bother? There's no reason to!

House points give you nothing, but you seem to be given them for anything (although that might be Hufflepuff, we appear to be given points for trying when potions fail while other houses get point deductions), and they don't count for anything! Galleons let you buy more stuff - but you don't need the stuff to do anything with! There is no requirement, nor reward for interaction while passing through the game (as of yet), and so the site doesn't hold my attention, and that's where it fails. If you had to duel (and beat) 5 other students to get to a chapter, fine. Same for you being required to brew a given potion (not easy with a laptop's touch pad!), or take an exam to finish the year and move on to the next. That could be challenging. But I don't think it's going to happen.

 

Given the fact that you are constantly clicking backwards and forwards to get what little gems there are hidden amongst the piles of dreck we already know (and that annoys me - I despise clicking on a link to find a one-liner about stuff I already knew), I'd rather wait for the info to be disseminated to other sites and pick it up there.

 

PS - the sorting quiz is bullshit. Can be lead - and I disagree with the questions Of the question one - what would you most like to be remembered after you die  - 3 answers were correct for me to some extent, depending on context. I'd like my family and friends to remember me fondly, and other people to appreciate the things I've done with my life. How are you supposed to answer that? Given that it's extremely obvious for this question which answer goes with which house...

 

PPS So is the wand quiz.

 

 

 

[Lamp Post]

I pretty much agree.  

 

Awkward, slow, and then. . . even the reading is a bit too much.  There's odd little character profile pages that say nothing more than the name and the relation of the character to Harry.  Rather ridiculous.

 

And all the clicking is bad, too. . . .and then on the pages there'll occasionally only be one thing to click so you'll be waiting there for ten minutes clicking on random objects everywhere on the page.  It's. . . not sloppy, just . . . not everything seems like it was quite thought through past the 'will this work and give out info' stage.

 

And then it's so slow.  After the story line. . .what, are you supposed to sit there and brew potions that don't even work the majority of the time?  Dueling might be interesting for a fair bit, but. . . that's down for who knows how long. 

 

But I didn't the the quiz was that bad.  Some, sure, terribly obvious.  Others aren't.  And when aren't they obvious.  As far as quizzes go it was pretty . . . not bad.

 

And I love my wand.  A lot.  Very fitting.  So that's prolly the best part of this entire ordeal.  

[EndOfTheEarth]

How long do you bet until the novelty wears off?

[Lamp Post]

Eh, really soon.

Like, I'm pretty much bored with it. And got kinda bored with it fairly quickly. Like, before chapter 15. And even the chapters and placement and the actual info/quotes they chose don't make sense.

So. . . yeah. It'll prolly only be big when new books come out. And it'll be old before it officially opens.

[Omega]

I just don't see how seven or eight questions like that are supposed to determine the aspects of personality that are supposedly associated for the houses and the wand components. People are waaaaay more complex than what  "Pick black or white", or "are you more afraid of fire, the dark", or "Do you prefer the sea, the forest or the castle." etc. give you.

Fine, there are probably trends I don't know how the logic system behind the sorting works, and how much the answer to any given question will affect the results. But given that when I checked the first time I was on there, there were nearly half again the number of Gryffindors AKA the House most people want to be in  (>10K as opposed to ~7K) as there were all the other houses, something's either skewed or the quiz can be led. Someone once said that sorting is fine at eleven, but if you sorted again at seventeen, everyone would be a Slytherin. Funny - less slytherins than any other house right now.

I wasn't as annoyed with the wand quiz - but still annoyed. My wand does fit me, but given that the woods have been written a bit like horoscope hoodoo, there is interpretation to fit any.

 

[Lamp Post]

Slytherin. :D  *wanted anything but Gyffindor* *got to choose between the two*

Though of everyone I've talked to, I've heard more wanting to be Ravenclaws than I have Gryffindors. 

 

And I couldn't add you. . . 

Unless I messed up your u/n. . . so can I get that again?

 

My wand. . . meh, really fits.  It's lovely.  I like it.  What'd you get?

[o0_flying high_0o]

On this, the other problem with the sorting quiz being so obvious is well, if you've got a preference and you're trying to be "honest" sometimes you second guess your answers. And so I ended up in Gryffindor. The house I feel the least affiliation with out of all of them. I mean, lovely house, filled with great people I'm sure but... I have things in common with Ravenclaw (the one I've always thought of myself as), and would've definitely understood Hufflepuff and Slytherin too. 

Also, no new information on the welcome letter for Gryffindor's. 

Other thing I noted, the house numbers seem to be balancing out. I mean, last I heard Ravenclaw had several thousand members over everyone else, now it's just 1000, with all the other houses back at around the same number as each other too. Makes me wonder if they decided some artificial balancing was taking place. 

 

XD As for wands, I like my wand. A lot. Doesn't really fit me, but it's fun and exciting. And it's inquisitive and impatient to try new things, which, well, some correlation. But I'm relatively sure my wand has a bigger personality than me....

[Omega]

Hufflepuff got new info.

 

"Congratulations! I’m Prefect Gabriel Truman, and I’m delighted to welcome you to HUFFLEPUFF HOUSE. Our emblem is the badger, an animal that is often underestimated, because it lives quietly until attacked, but which, when provoked, can fight off animals much larger than itself, including wolves. Our house colours are yellow and black, and our common room lies one floor below the ground, on the same corridor as the kitchens.

Now, there are a few things you should know about Hufflepuff house. First of all, let’s deal with a perennial myth about the place, which is that we’re the least clever house. WRONG. Hufflepuff is certainly the least boastful house, but we’ve produced just as many brilliant witches and wizards as any other. Want proof? Look up Grogan Stump, one of the most popular Ministers for Magic of all time. He was a Hufflepuff – as were the successful Ministers Artemesia Lufkin and Dugald McPhail. Then there’s the world authority on magical creatures, Newt Scamander; Bridget Wenlock, the famous thirteenth-century Arithmancer who first discovered the magical properties of the number seven, and Hengist of Woodcroft, who founded the all-wizarding village of Hogsmeade, which lies very near Hogwarts School. Hufflepuffs all.

So, as you can see, we’ve produced more than our fair share of powerful, brilliant and daring witches and wizards, but, just because we don’t shout about it, we don’t get the credit we deserve. Ravenclaws, in particular, assume that any outstanding achiever must have come from their house. I got into big trouble during my third year for duelling a Ravenclaw prefect who insisted that Bridget Wenlock had come from his house, not mine. I should have got a week of detentions, but Professor Sprout let me off with a warning and a box of coconut ice.

Hufflepuffs are trustworthy and loyal. We don’t shoot our mouths off, but cross us at your peril; like our emblem, the badger, we will protect ourselves, our friends and our families against all-comers. Nobody intimidates us.

However, it’s true that Hufflepuff is a bit lacking in one area. We’ve produced the fewest Dark wizards of any house in this school. Of course, you’d expect Slytherin to churn out evil-doers, seeing as they’ve never heard of fair play and prefer cheating over hard work any day, but even Gryffindor (the house we get on best with) has produced a few dodgy characters.

What else do you need to know? Oh yes, the entrance to the common room is concealed in a stack of large barrels in a nook on the right hand side of the kitchen corridor. Tap the barrel two from the bottom, middle of the second row, in the rhythm of ‘Helga Hufflepuff’, and the lid will swing open. We are the only house at Hogwarts that also has a repelling device for would-be intruders. If the wrong lid is tapped, or if the rhythm of the tapping is wrong, the illegal entrant is doused in vinegar.

You will hear other houses boast of their security arrangements, but it so happens that in more than a thousand years, the Hufflepuff common room and dormitories have never been seen by outsiders. Like badgers, we know exactly how to lie low – and how to defend ourselves.

Once you’ve opened the barrel, crawl inside and along the passageway behind it, and you will emerge into the cosiest common room of them all. It is round and earthy and low-ceilinged; it always feels sunny, and its circular windows have a view of rippling grass and dandelions.

There is a lot of burnished copper about the place, and many plants, which either hang from the ceiling or sit on the windowsills. Our Head of house, Professor Pomona Sprout, is Head of Herbology, and she brings the most interesting specimens (some of which dance and talk) to decorate our room – one reason why Hufflepuffs are often very good at Herbology. Our overstuffed sofas and chairs are upholstered in yellow and black, and our dormitories are reached through round doors in the walls of the common room. Copper lamps cast a warm light over our four-posters, all of which are covered in patchwork quilts, and copper bed warmers hang on the walls, should you have cold feet.

Our house ghost is the friendliest of them all: the Fat Friar. You’ll recognise him easily enough; he’s plump and wears monk’s robes, and he’s very helpful if you get lost or are in any kind of trouble.

I think that’s nearly everything. I must say, I hope some of you are good Quidditch players. Hufflepuff hasn’t done as well as I’d like in the Quidditch tournament lately.

You should sleep comfortably. We’re protected from storms and wind down in our dormitories; we never have the disturbed nights those in the towers sometimes experience.

And once again: congratulations on becoming a member of the friendliest, most decent and most tenacious house of them all."

[o0_flying high_0o]

You get like a whole essay o.o That's so cool. And really interesting. 

We got two lines. Basically saying all the best wizards and witches get into Gryffindor, we've got Dumbledore, what more do you need to know? No mention of any new wizards, or of our relationships with other houses or anything. 

 

By the way, in case you're wondering who PhoenixGlow133 is, that would be me. There's no way to just send messages, it seems. Which is a really dumb oversight.