A couple days ago I finally got what I had spent weeks waiting for, and I had been starting to believe I would have terrible luck and would get in one of the last beta releases at the end of September. It was hard waiting that month, but the excitement when I got my letter was incredible! Unfortunately I didn't get to explore right away because my friend was in my room waiting for us to go to her apartment to play Portal 2 Co-op, but that was so fun I actually forgot about this for a few hours. That is until I got back, and I got to click on that wonderful blue button! Scroll down to see the amazing screen I got when I did:
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After a month of waiting this, THIS, is what I got. I was frustrated, but luckily it wasn't too much later when I got in. I logged in and I got a page showing me all the things that one could do on Pottermore, and then there was another button...:
...which I was all too happy to click.
And then my real experience started. As I mentioned before in my first blog about the topic, I won't be revealing too much so that I don't ruin the magic of exploring the site for yourself. But of course I wouldn't be writing this post if I wasn't going to talk about anything, so let's stop wasting time and get into what Pottermore is about!
Now if you remember, Jo told us Pottermore was going to be a unique online reading experience. It certainly is like nothing I've seen before. One of the main pages you visit is a sort of map, with dots trailing around seven symbols, each symbol representing one of the books. Each dot represents a chapter, and you must finish one chapter before moving onto the next one. So I clicked on the first dot, and off we go!
The reading experience is like this. Once you click on a chapter, you have two or three sections that highlight momentous occasion in the chapter. Obviously, you start with the first moment. You are taken to a page that is made up mostly of a picture that represents the moment you are in. For example, the first moment has a picture of Privet Drive during the day, with McGonagall in her tabby cat form sitting under the sign. If you move your mouse around you can make certain things happen. Another example, if in this moment I move my mouse over McGonagall, her tail starts to wag. You can also zoom in the picture twice, bringing things further away in focus, and blurring out what you've already seen. By zooming in an out you are able to find things that you can click on to collect, or it will either be a new piece of information you've unlocked about a character or place or etc that Jo has decided to share with us. In the chapter you unlock a whole biography about Minerva McGonagall with detailed information about her parents, brothers, and her life growing up. The new information we now have access to is pretty amazing.
So basically the reading experience is the above, and then repeated. Each moment has a new picture for you to interact with and new items to collect. The most fun moments are when you get to interact as if you were a new student going to Hogwarts. This starts in the Gringotts section, where you get to open up your own vault.
You then get access to your galleons, and you get to go and buy your equipment. The best part is when you get to buy your wand. Your wand is chosen by way of answering questions, which I won't tell you any of. But the survey of who you are is really amazing, and it goes way beyond simple questions like your favorite color or what is your wand arm. These are questions you have to think about and you have to explore who you are. My wand ended up being pear tree with unicorn hair, eleven inches, and surprisingly swishy.
After that the story continued and finally we got to Hogwarts! This mean sorting time! After going through another moment or two, a video from Jo pops up and she tells us we're about to be sorted and all about house points and things like that. Then there was another quiz like the one at Ollivander's. I knew which house I wanted to be in, and I could have chosen my answers according to get into it, but I wanted everything to be honest. I went with the answers I really though fit me and ended up in...
It didn't really surprise me. I'll be honest here too. I was a little disappointed. I wanted Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, and even though I've insisted to others throughout my Harry Potter career that I was made for Ravenclaw, I always knew if I was sorted for real I would be placed in Hufflepuff. However, then I read the welcome message, and my thoughts changed. I realized that Hufflepuff wasn't the place for losers, it was just simply the house that fans had decided was the uncool one, and the one that was never given a chance to show what its got. It's a stereotype we've placed on the Puffs, and we know how unfair those can be. Unfortunately, you can see people's judgements about Hufflepuff on Pottermore. So far, Hufflepuff has the most members, but is last for house points by quite a gap (so far Slytherin is leading, followed by Ravenclaw, and then Gryffindor). This has lead me to believe that a good majority of those who have been sorted into Hufflepuff when they saw their sorting were something of the mentality like: "Oh, I got sorted into the stupid house. I don't care about this anymore because I didn't get into [insert other house here], so I'm not really going to try." It makes me sad. I hope if you end up in Hufflepuff you will try your best despite what others think, because that's what we do best! Puff pride!
Anywho, we'll carry on. The story carries on taking you on through all the important moments, and you get to learn how to brew potions, collects galleons and other items, and earn house points by interacting. Finally you get to the end and you go through the moments where you're going for the stone. You get to catch the flying key, and the most fun one was figuring out the potions riddle. There's the moment with Quirrell and after a couple more moments the chapter ends! Right now book one is the only one available to explore, so I can't wait to see how the interactions change as the books do.
So, now the general overview. I must say that Pottermore is very unique, and it's fun to explore. The art is amazing and the new information available is one of the best aspects. That being said, there are a lot of things that need improvement, which of course is what the beta testing is all for. I mentioned a lot of interacting in my post, but really mostly what you're doing is clicking on the pictures a couple times to get them to zoom in and out. There's usually only one or two items to click on per picture, and after you've watched the small animations on the moments, there's nothing else afterward to really bring you back later on. Also, there's no music at all, which is a common complaint in the comments of the pages. Clicking in silence minute after minute gets a bit dull.
The dueling has been closed for twenty days now, so I haven't even gotten to try it. Brewing potions is impossible. I tried to do one and they gave me fifteen seconds to complete six steps, which included crushing up a beozar, adding ingredients, and heating up the potion for five of my precious seconds. I had barely even added my crushed ingredients before my time ran out, and that was only the second step. It was a waste of the 21 galleons I spent for the ingredients.
Again I'll have to be honest in that Pottermore has made me a little disappointed. I was expecting more. But still, I know it's only the beta and I also know that they're working on the potions and dueling. I'll just have to be patient as the tweaks and improvements are made, and I'm expecting Pottermore to surprise me with its awesome-ness later on.
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