BONUS UPDATE:
Prize for Slytherin will be 24 hours early entry into Chamber of Secrets. They have not issued a date for when this is occuring, they did however state in the Pottermore Insider that only Slytherin accounts that existed in Slytherin at the time the cup was awarded will have access.
“As part of their reward for winning the Pottermore House Cup, Slytherin will be able to explore the new chapters of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 24 hours ahead of the other houses.
Please be aware that only students who were in Slytherin when the inaugural Pottermore House Cup was awarded, will get early access.
For students who are not in Slytherin, don’t despair. The first chapters of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets will be available for everyone immediately after this 24-hour period.
From then on, all users will be able to explore the new chapters, discover new Moments and continue their journey on Pottermore.
It’s official, as of around 9:00 am BST Slytherin has been named the victors for the Pottermore House Cup.
I’m sure a lot of you have come by to see if I have posted what the secret bonus is, as I am a Slytherin. They haven’t told us yet! Rest assured once I know I shall return to this entry and tell you all.
I am so very happy! Thank you to everyone who’s ever dueled me! Thank you to Gryffindor for making it a spirited fight since opening! Thank you to Ravenclaw for always being there to duel us! Thank you for Hufflepuff for never giving up, and earning points all the way to the end!
Here’s what Pottermore Insider had to say about the cup:
“We are delighted to announce that you can visit the Great Hall to view the award ceremony for the inaugural Pottermore House Cup.
Thank you to all houses for making this such a spirited contest.
We will be congratulating the winner in further detail, here on the Pottermore Insider tomorrow but in the meantime, good luck to all and enjoy the ceremony!”
So there is a chance we won’t find out about the secret bonus until tomorrow.
slytherins win dirty they do it and they always will
Actually there are cheaters in all the houses. Bitter much?
My best friend is in ravenclaw and I say they did pretty well considering they didn’t get last and they have the least people. She is a proud ravenclaw and i am a slytherin. We are besties though.
I have several good Ravenclaw friends and wish they weren’t at such a population deficit.
The differing numbers of members in the houses is having an interesting effect on the standings, especially with CoS now out. The Gryffs, because of sheer numbers, are pulling ahead of the Claws and Puffs as their members explore the chapters (though they haven’t caught up with Slytherin as quickly as I would have expected).
I’d be curious to hear what people think about why each house has been successful or not. Gryffindor is easiest: Many (especially younger) want to be like Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and took the quiz until they got a Gryff sorting. The Puffs have, it is believed, far fewer active members than others because of the opposite, i.e. defections by people unhappy with their sorting. Slytherin has had this problem to a lesser extent, but hasn’t suffered as much. This may be because – and I have no evidence for this, just a hunch – its members seem on average to be older. That or we simply have a chip on our collective shoulder about the anti-Slyth attitude among some other users and competed extra hard to probe them wrong…
Which brings us to the problematic case of Ravenclaw. At one point, a bug that made Ravenclaw sortings impossible in the Spanish and Italian versions of PM had been reported. I don’t know how long it existed for, but judging from the usernames of Claws I have duelled, and from a quick look into the Italian and Spanish-language Great Halls, this is no longer an issue. Did this cost them so many members while it was the case that they have never recovered? Or are the answers that people choose on the sorting hat quiz just less likely to yield a Ravenclaw sorting? One very thorough blog has posted an in-depth analysis of PM’s sorting hat, and showed that certain questions have answers that are far more popular than others – a problem if you want to sort people roughly evenly.
Apologies for the novella. Would be curious to hear what others think. I have felt bad for my Ravenclaw friends as well!
You wrote a novella and now you are about to get one back. *deep breath*
The differing number of members has greatest effect when it comes to the collection of items. Because while not all members of a house may actively duel or brew potion you can bet every one of them goes through the chapters and collects the items. This is why after the site opened to the public Gryffindor rose from a distant third to being at the top with Slytherin. So many people gathering items.
In regards to CoS I can tell you exactly why the item collection has not helped them catch up. There were a LOT of Gryff, Puff and Claw users who had second accounts in Slytherin “in case they won”. I bet each and every one of these people went into CoS early and collected items not considering that they were earning us a point for every item that they collected while they were doing so. This effectively cancelled out the points they would get collecting items the next day on their home house account. They don’t realize this, most of them. I see people in the Great Hall claiming we are cheating because the gap became so large not realizing that it was the cheaters in all the other houses who had duplicate accounts in Slytherin for whatever reason that helped make our score so large.
There are a lot of older members in Slytherin, but also at any given moment in the Great Hall if you look at the scores of the people in there, you will see that all the Slytherins have a higher average score than the other houses. We earn more points per person. Perhaps this is a side effect of Slytherin ambition.
The Ravenclaw sorting bug was a major detractor for them. Especially since the bug hit right before opening, which meant that when the other houses were getting mountains of new students, Claw was getting a certain percentage less making the balance out of whack. I don’t know how long it will take to recover from this, but I’m sure they will eventually. But it did ruin their point trajectory entirely for the first house cup. If they have really fixed it, which I had not heard that they had but I know they were working on it, the population rise caused by CoS starting to come out should help them with their population woes.
Whoo, that was long.
Thanks for responding in kind, Elm! ‘Tis much appareciated.
Good point about ‘secondary’ accounts – I had thought of that as a possible explanation, but didn’t think that there’d be nearly enough people who wanted to see CoS badly enough to register for Slytherin accounts. Apparently, I was wrong. Slytherin is now about 700000 points ahead, which is 550000 more than we were when CoS opened. Given that CoS chapters 1-4 give about 30 points to anyone who explores thoroughly, that comes out to a bit over 6000 ‘cheating’ members in each of the other three houses (at least, considering that not everyone would collect everything), which isn’t difficult to imagine. Serves them right…
Fair point about Slytherins on average having more points – we’re ahead even though we don’t have anyone on the main leaderboard. But what of those super-high point totals? I saw it posted in our common room that the points leaders must have used bots to get where they were… is there any evidence that this is possible? I know that some people on PM must have a lot of free time, but is there any reason to suspect such underhandedness?
Finally, I agree with you about the Claws – I really hope that they recover, because the sorting bug really screwed them over. Hopefully more people join, and negate this disadvantage for them ASAP…
Hi Elm,
I’m a Slytherin and I’m very happy when our House won the Cup. But I read that only Slytherin accounts that existed when the Cup was awarded will be given early access to CoS. Does it mean that only Slytherins who were logged-in at the time the Cup was awarded will be given early access? Or do you just need to have a Slytherin account when the ceremony occured to get the prize?
I think your account just has to have existed when the Cup was awarded. If you were to create an account now and be placed in Slytherin, you wouldn’t have access. I suppose this is to prevent people in other houses creating fake accounts to get into the Chamber earlier.
I’m sure that is exactly the reasoning. They were hoping to avoid a giant population rise in Slytherin for people to get into CoS early.
Wish I could say it was 100% working, but I have seen new “Slytherins” in the common room talking about being excited about early access despite registering the day after the cup. But I’m sure it is deterring most.
You needed to have already been sorted into Slytherin before July 5th.
“as a part of your reward” means we will have more things?
I’m so proud of our house! And I can’t wait for the chapters!
Thank you Elmy for everything, I hope our companionship will keep going in the next books!
I wonder what will happen to Diagon alley. Will it automaticly upgrade to Year 2 when CoS opens? Or will we have to get to the moment where harry gets to diagon alley and maby press an “upgrade button”. Will we need to go shoping again? Will more shops open? Will there be more useful items?
Well just have to wait and see
I’m a Hufflepuff and I’m tired of people saying that we should be doing better because we have so many students. I would be interested to see a statistic of how many students get sorted into a house and then start a new account without deleting their old one, because I’m pretty sure Hufflepuff gets the short stick in this. The number of students reported in the Great Hall is misleading – a large number of them have created new profiles just to be in Gryffindor or another “prestigious” house and haven’t deleted their Hufflepuff account. I’m proud to be a Puff and I wish more people felt that way when they were sorted into my house.
Yes, I feel for you on this. But to be fair I can not tell you the number of people I see show up in the Slytherin common room saying they are sorted wrong and they didn’t want Slytherin. Every house has abandoners, though your house has certainly been hit the hardest.
I would be interested to see the population in the event that Pottermore actually cleared out inactive accounts.
It says in the T&Cs they will delete dormant accounts after 6 months, so we’ll soon find out. Hufflepuff has now overtaken Ravenclaw though, good for them
i was not sorted when the hose cup was awarded >:(
but i got the owl
Was the account made before they awarded the cup? Maybe they are looking at registration date not sorting date. Could be you made it through.
it was made after house cup but the date is 5 june
The bonus is that we get to enter the Chamber of Secrets early chapters early. We can’t yet, but they said that they will send us a message with more information. The thing is though, how early? Because, the CoS is supposed to be coming out soon to EVERYONE so I feel like we will get it barely early at all, making it a pretty useless prize. Also, I can’t wait to find out what the last little thing is on the top dashboard thingy. I have no idea when we will, but I can’t wait.
24 hours early. That is all the information they have given unfortunately, no info on WHEN those 24 hours are. Hopefully they will tell us and not just find out when it happens.
Hi Elm,
I wonder if they’ll bump up our Gringotts accounts at that time. I imagine that most of the Betas are broke by now.
Yes. The help section officialy states that we will get more money when CoS opens
Yeah, thank you to Ravenclaw for always being there to duel us! I have to admit, I was kind of a bit late to the party but when it caught me it really did! Though I did make some 1000 points in duelling, I guess I gave at least 3000 to others by losing. And most of them to Ravenclaws, obviously, cause they were always there to take my challenge.
Some game, guys, some game
I am very happy and proud to be a slytherin, but honestly I expected a little more on the ceremony hehe
I stayed up until midnight waiting to see who would win, then, realizing it would be awarded at FOUR IN THE MORNING (my time) I set my alarm for then and seeing we won I was too happy to go to sleep until 6:30am! CONGRATS TO ALL THE HOUSES, WE ALL DID WELL!
I don’t think it’s fair that they didn’t scale the house cup points based on the number of people in the house. Of course the house with the least members wouldn’t place first, it’s impossible, it’s not like those in Ravenclaw have more time to try to get points then the houses with more members. I’m trying not to be bitter, but it really isn’t fair. At least Gryffindor didn’t win.
I have sent queries to Pottermore asking if the score on Pottermore was weighted based on the houses population. This is the answer I received:
“Thank you for your email.
It is important to remember that each point you earn as an individual does not equal a whole point for your house. Nevertheless, every point you do earn does contribute towards the overall house total – so the more points you earn, the better your house will do.
In the short future we will look to provide further clarity to users about the house points situation. Please check the Insider blog for updates at http://insider.pottermore.com/.”
I’ve read in a few places about a sorting bug in the Italian and Spanish versions of Pottermore that make it impossible to get a Ravenclaw sorting. The owner of a blog that analyses the Pottermore questions did a numbe of test sortings, seemingly confirming this.
Could this be why Ravenclaws have such a numbers disadvantage? I can say anecdotally that I haven’t yet come across a Ravenclaw when dueling who has an obviously Spanish or Italian username, while I have come across several Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors who do. Curious to hear everyone’s thoughts, as this hasn’t been mentioned by anyone in the PM comments yet, that I’ve seen…
‘Thank you to Gryffindor for making it a spirited fight since opening!’
Excuse me?? That is such bull! The Ravenclaws were fighting and beating the Slytherins through the whole of the beta period! Only after they opened to the public and Gryffindor got a huge influx of new students (all the houses had more than the Ravenclaws) that the Claws lost their lead. Idiot.
I love you quoted it and then still didn’t catch that it said “SINCE OPENING”! So who’s the real idiot here?
Yeah…..think about WHAT you say before you SAY IT?!
You said ‘since opening’ and it seems like you meant opening of Pottermore itself rather than opening to the public. So it seems like it would be you ElmBlade.
Whatever you would like to believe. Everyone else seems to have gotten the meaning just fine. Enjoy the sour grapes.
Ouch. Someone’s really cranky.
Elm, I didn’t call you cranky. Only the idiot who called you an idiot.
I realized that.
its sad because I’ve been big in the notion that it should have been Ravenclaw vs Slytherin because of Beta. Obviously they don’t actually read my blog. Talk about sour grapes.
Exactly. Is it the Slytherins’ fault that after the public opening in April, lots of people got sorted into Gryffindor? Did the Snakes rig the sorting or something??? Ridiculous. I appreciate the fact that despite having the least number of students, the Claws have performed admirably well. On Pottermore, Slytherins are some of the nicest bunch of people, and to come out with a reaction like this is just plain low…
Even though I’m a Ravenclaw, and I wish they had the points-per-student method (since then we would have won), congratulations Slytherins! You worked hard to win the House Cup, even with the second-least number of people! Plus, I’m glad someone other than Gryffindor won, since they usually get the glory (like in the books)!
Thanks you for your blog, Elm. I really appreciate it and House Cup dot Info. Could you post a larger image of the screen capture up there? I want to set it as my desktop wallpaper and glory in it for a while….
Well done, Snakes! Good job, All!
Congradulations!
I’m a Slytherin! I stayed up all night waiting and I was there the minute it was announced, refreshing my page every thirty seconds lol. I feel so proud of my fellow snakes. I’m honestly not even into Pottermore that much, but I am just bursting with pride over here. Happy Slytherin Day everybody!!!!!!!! WE WON THE FIRST HOUSE CUP OF POTTERMORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WELL DONE ELM!!!! Thanks for guiding us to the cup.