Hogwarts Live Blog

If people want to be rude and immature on holidays and abuse the special modules we have for you to enjoy and give you a little something different to do, we will NOT do them anymore. It is extremely cowardly to abuse them to try and ruin someones holiday to make you feel better about yourself. If you were one of the ones who used the anonymous option on the Holiday Gift module to send someone a gift with a nasty uncalled for message, you have two options, owl them an apology or ruin the game for everyone else around the holiday seasons because we won't install any special ones anymore.

If you know who did this, you can petition their name and encourage them to fess up.
Also please read the blog post below this one. :)

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it and Happy Holidays to the rest,
Spinal

As an early Christmas present for you all, Danilo has edited the Gift Shop module to extend the amount of time that presents can be opened!

I believe that it is extended for 6 days to allow presents to be opened through New Year's Eve (Dec. 31) since so many of you requested that day to end it. To be safe, I am leaving it set to start opening on Dec. 26; the day AFTER Christmas. If presents can still be opened January 1, so be it, but I'm trying to accommodate as many players as I can. Hopefully this will allow everyone to get a chance to open all their gifts.

Once again, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!


UPDATES:

Peeves the Poltergeist has been fixed! He now tells you the correct amount of gems he gives you! Thanks to all that petitioned that. :)

Also, for all you cheaters who have been evading PvP by timing out in dwellings...that has been fixed too. Now you will be kicked to the village when you time out. :)

Merry Christmas to those of us who want to kill you!

Update from Spinal:

I added a special Reindeer pet to the Magical Managerie in Diagon Alley, it'll be available until New Years.

Thanks to Danilo's hard work, the Public Profiles have been fixed!! If you were unable to edit your profile before, you should now be able to!

For those of you unfamiliar with the Public Profile, all you have to do is click on your own name in chat to access it or go to Preferences and there is a link there. There are spaces for you to enter what type of wand you carry, your favorite Harry Potter book and character and your age. All of these are optional- you can fill in all, some, or none. There is also a space for you to post an avatar (directions are in the profile) and a blank text area for you to write about your character or whatever else you want.

Everyone should send Danilo a thank-you present from the Holiday Shop! ;)

Enjoy! XD

The Petition for Help link is NOT for you to ask us how to play the game. Nor is it for you to tell us you're dead, NOR is it there for you to say hi :|

We have a Frequently Asked Questions section (with answers! :O). It is not there just to take up space. If you have a question, please check there first. If it's not there, maybe that means you are supposed to figure it out for yourself. Novel thought, huh?

The Petition for Help is to report game problems. You not knowing something because you didn't bother clicking and reading is not a problem >.>

An excerpt from our beloved FAQ:

A petition should not say 'this doesn't work' or 'I'm broken' or 'I can't log in' or 'yo. Sup?' A petition *should* be very complete in describing *what* doesn't work. Please tell us what happened, what the error message is (copy and paste is your friend), when it occurred, and anything else that may be helpful. "I'm broken" is not helpful. "There are salmon flying out of my monitor when I log in" is much more descriptive as well as humorous, although there's not much we can do about it. In general, please be patient with these requests - many people play the game, and as long as the admin is swamped with 'yo - Sup?' petitions, it will take some time to sift through them.

Thank you.

I realize that it seems unfair to only have 1 day to open presents but as far as I know, that's how it's set up. I know the original module is written that way. Some of you seem to remember that gifts were available for opening for several days, but Spinal, Edmund and I don't remember and I have no way of checking. If it turns out that the gifts stay longer than one day, then great- everyone should be happy, but having a vote as to which most players would prefer is my only viable option as to try to make things fair for everyone. So with that said, on to the results...


Christmas Day (Dec. 25) (62 - 23%)23
Day AFTER Christmas (Dec. 26) (149 - 55.4%)55.4
Day BEFORE Christmas (Dec 24) (58 - 21.6%)

According to our poll, the majority of you would like to wait until the day AFTER Christmas to open presents so I have made this adjustment in the settings.

Happy Holidays!

Our Christmas Presents module only allows players to open their gifts on ONE day.

We understand that Christmas Day is usually a busy day for most people and some of you may not be able to log in that day because you will be with family or out of town or whatever.

Would you prefer to leave it as is and open presents ON Christmas Day (Dec. 25) or would you like for us to make it so you can open presents the day BEFORE (Dec. 24) or the day AFTER (Dec. 26)?

You will have one week to vote (until Saturday, Dec. 12). Your can vote multiple times, but the only one that is counted in the results is the choice you made last. We'll post the results after we close the poll so you will all know when the gifts can be opened.

Thanks!

Click here to vote on "Christmas Presents" poll »

As a special thanksgiving treat I increased the max number of players allowed at any given moment to 85. The previous limit was 75.

If you find you still can't log in during peak hours please consider getting a VIP Pass from the Prefect's Lounge.

Happy Turkey Day! :)

Just so we are all on the same page here...cybering is NOT allowed on this site. Anywhere. Not in dwellings, not in owls, and certainly not in chats.

We have the power to monitor the ENTIRE site- this includes owls. For each instance you are caught cybering, you will be banned for 1 week. If it continues to be a problem, we will extend the ban as we see fit. If you are an ADULT (18+) and you cyber with a minor (under 18), you will be banned PERMANENTLY after the first time.

Intimate contact is limited to kissing, holding hands, snuggling, cuddling, and other things of this nature. NOT playing in people's bras, pants, doing all kinds of naughty/inappropriate things, etc. like everyone is accustomed to doing. We have gotten a bit lax in enforcing this type of behavior, but this has always been the rule. Children play on this site and we need to keep things appropriate.

Hello Everyone,

As most of you know, for the last 4 years I've been working for a company focused on providing free legal information, Justia, owned by Danilo's Uncle, Tim Stanley. In honor of the new movie, they asked me to write a Potter and Law related blog post on the Justia Company Blog.

I thought I would share the link to my new blog post, "An Introduction to Wizarding Law" with you here. Enjoy!

More Clarifications:

NO alt interaction falls under the causing drama part. Don't argue with yourself in chat, don't PvP yourself, don't send yourself pets, don't rez yourself.

Players that are found to have referred their own alts will be punished by having their mains locked. This is cheating. Danilo is generous enough to reward you with donation points for bringing in NEW players. Don't turn around and disrespect him by taking advantage of his generosity.

-Witchy


Clarification on alts and changes to the rule.

You many only have up to 4 accounts per IP, so if there are 4 different people on your computer playing, you cannot have an alternative character. If you exceed the 4 account limit, the HIGHEST account(s) will be locked. So if there is 6 accounts, the two highest will be locked and you will no longer be able to use those accounts. THIS INCLUDES ANY ACCOUNTS ON YOUR IP THAT MIGHT NOT EVEN BE YOURS THAT PUT YOU OVER 4! So be warned, your account could be lost if you let someone with 4 accounts already on it.

Also, you may only have alternative characters if you plan to play them, alts created just to start drama and issues with other people in chat WILL be locked(this means ALL level/VE alts).

-Spinal


Just because this is not located under the rules in the FAQ yet, does not mean it is not a rule. This change to the rule was approved by Danilo and WILL be added once he gets to it. If you have had accounts locked because you neglected to read this in the first place, that is your own fault for not reading the blog. The owl the system sends out when there is a new blog post tells you:

Please note that blog entries contain important information about Hogwarts Live. This information is not limited to the following: game updates, rule changes, warnings, and notices about downtime and bugs. If you fail to read a blog post outlining a new rule you will not be shown mercy when you break it.

--Headmaster Danilo