Breaking Pottermore News

Greetings loyal readers!!! Before we get into the latest news, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about Pottermore Breaking News, and what you can expect from this area of my blog.

The first thing you have probably noticed, is the Pottermore Info Board table heading up this article. This is meant to be the most up to date info on Pottermore all in one place so you can check it at a glance. Right now it contains the two main games and their status, and then population and point data from the Great Hall. If you have any suggestion for other things that should be on this at a glance table, feel free to leave a suggestion in comments.

I will be updating the table as often as I can, but know that during work hours on week days it will not be changing.

Now…. ON TO THE NEWS!

5/3/2012 @ 11:17 am EST: Greetings! Looks like Pottermore is promised to be opened in early April according to this entry in the pottermore insider blog.

10/1/2011 @ 10:42 am EST: Yesterday, the Pottermore Insider blog updated with a lengthy piece about the beta phase and future public opening of the website. I’m going to be talking about the important bits but you can click here to read the entire “Beta and Beyond” article.

Since the launch of the Beta, we’ve seen really high levels of activity, and interaction with the site has been phenomenal. This affects how quickly we can give everyone access. As a result, we’ve decided to extend the Beta period beyond September and take a different approach to the way new users are brought onto the site.

There it is folks, straight from the source, something we all knew had to come. The beta phase has been extended past the end of September. Something that should make those who didn’t receive their welcome e-mails until this last week feel a bit better.

From the end of October, registration will be opened to everyone and we’ll be giving access to registered users in phases. Access may be granted quickly, but please note it could also take some weeks or months, depending on demand.

Honestly, I saw this coming, even mentioned it in my Elm’s Two Cents blog entry. So come the end of October they will be allowing people to register for new accounts, BUT not for immediate access to the site. Instead they will be waiting for welcome e-mails just like all of us had to for the Beta phase. The main difference is that whereas we had an end date for when we knew we’d get in, these new folks could be waiting for “weeks or months”.

The decision to do this is highly controversial from what I’m seeing on the social network sites. Many people who had been waiting anxiously for October are now feeling left out in the cold once again. Some Betas had deleted their accounts hoping to re-register and get re-sorted come October, and I bet they are kicking themselves right now.

I’ll be eager to see how the registration process goes down once it begins, and will probably register just to keep an eye on how it’s going. I would also be interested to see how long it actually takes if I manage to register early in the process to actually get into the site.

We are also making a number of enhancements and simplifications to Pottermore, in order to make the site smoother and more enjoyable – so existing Beta users will likely experience some changes when new users begin to join.

I’m not really sure how to take this statement. I’ve read and re-read it hoping to glean more meaning from the phrasing. The word “simplifications” in here really worries me, simply because, honestly, the site is already a little TOO simple. So simplifying it just to make the servers run better would not be improving the experience. No point letting more people into a site with even less to do.

At the same time, they talk about enhancements being made, and I hope they mean to the server array. ENHANCE YOUR BANDWIDTH, POTTERMORE!

Finally, the Pottermore Shop, which will sell the Harry Potter eBooks and digital audio books, will now open in the first half of 2012, in order to allow us to focus on our first priority: opening Pottermore to as many people as possible and making the experience as good as it can be.

You know, I understand wanting to make the site a better experience, but since when does the publication date of Harry Potter e-books need to coincide with the site going full public? I WANT MY E-BOOKS. I’ve been waiting years. These books have nothing to do with site design, and flash games. This decision makes no sense to me.

Also, if you are pushing the e-books back from fall 2011 to early 2012, what does that mean for the Chamber of Secrets portion of Pottermore?

They’ve been incredibly active, interacting with the site far more intensely and frequently than we thought they would. (You might be interested to know the site has already had 550 million page views!)

This statement really shows how LITTLE they understood about the fan base they were building the site for. To say we are frequenting the site intensely and being surprised about it means you must have been asleep since 1997 when the Potter books started hitting shelves. The Potter fandom is by far one of the most eager and voracious groups you will ever find. You should have expected this. The fact that you didn’t says a lot about the team running this Muggle operation.

Also, their surprise and pride at the 550 million page views is strange. Sites like Twitter and Facebook get that in a day. Pottermore hit it in six weeks, and is buckling under the strain. Something is wrong with that.

We’re tweaking different parts of the site based on how you’re interacting with it and the feedback you’re currently giving us. We’ll also be sending out a Beta survey to all Beta participants to help us decide which features to enhance and which to simplify.

This is the second time they’ve mentioned e-mailing out a Beta survey, and yet it still hasn’t arrived. Waiting to the end of the phase wouldn’t make sense, because they SHOULD allow themselves time to take the feedback into account and make changes. Perhaps, though, they are waiting to get Dueling back online. Speaking of Dueling …

This area of the site has proved to be even more popular than we anticipated and we want to make sure that it will be able cope with the large number of users we expect before turning it back on.

We know people are keen for Wizard’s Duel to return and we’ll let you know, via the Insider, the moment it’s available.

I’m floored by the statement about Dueling being even more popular than they expected, because when dueling was online less than 10% of the Beta pool was even in. How could they possibly know how popular it REALLY is, when only a small fraction of people were in to try it?

This gives absolutely no indication on WHEN they expect to get the game back online and running. If they keep to their word that they will post on the Insider when it goes live I recommend you subscribe to their Twitter feed via text message. (text “follow pottermore” to 40404) If you do this you will receive a text message every time they make a tweet, and since they tweet every time they update the Insider Blog it will help you be one of the first to know when Dueling goes back live again.

So there you have it, the sizzling news hot off the presses. I will be updated Breaking Pottermore News whenever there is important info released on the status of the site. I will tweet whenever news is added to this page, but not every time I update the Info Board (as I expect to be doing that multiple times of day).

Comments, as always, are quite welcome.