Hogwarts Live Blog

Congratulations to Slytherin for winning the Holiday Tree Contest! They will have the House Championship buff for the remainder of the month!

The Fireplace that was located in the Hog's Head Inn is now located in the Common Rooms (located in Hogwarts). You'll be able to open your gifts at midnight PST. If you haven't sent any gifts to your friends yet you still have time, the Holiday Gift shop is located in every village.

The Staff would like to wish everyone Happy Holidays!

Hi, everyone hope you're enjoying your winter break! I have some more good news for everyone.

The Forgotten Password page now works properly and even better you can retrieve your password using your username/character name OR your email address. Furthermore it's case insensitive.

As for Profile Editing go to your Profile Page and click on "Edit Profile." The new change/bug fix is that now if you blank out any of the fields it will delete the information stored in the database for that field instead of saving your old information.

And the points stand thus:

In fourth place, with 52 points, Slytherin House.
In third place, with 81 points, Gryffindor House.
In second place, with 88 points, Ravenclaw House.
In first place, with 97 points, Hufflepuff House.

Congratulations to Hufflepuff, the House Cup will sit in the office of !FourPointOh WitchyWoman, Head of Hufflepuff House, for the following term.

In the spirit of the holidays I'm granting all players that have either been perm or temp muted amnesty. This is a second chance. If you screw it up you won't get another one.

For those of you who haven't chatted in a while please treat others with respects and be sure to follow the Hogwarts Live Rules.

I know this is more of a punishment for the players who didn't do anything wrong, but give them a second chance maybe they'll be less annoying this time around. =)

It's that time of year again and I don't mean Christmas though this is how we at Hogwarts Live choose to celebrate the spirit of giving that's supposed to accompany the holidays. So what exactly am I talking about? We're giving away Harry Potter DVDs! That's right giving them away! Just exchange your Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans for raffle tickets and enter to win one of three Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince DVDs.

Don't know how to do this? Head on over to the Candy Raffle page (the link is on the bottom of the left side navigation on the main site under the "--Global--" navigation heading).

The Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince DVD Giveaway ends Tuesday, December 15, 2009. This gives us enough time to get you your prizes before Christmas. So hurry up, don't delay, exchange your beans for tickets today!

I should also mention this is great for those of you who can't buy your own copy of the DVD as you get beans for free just from playing the game.

Right now is your last chance to pre-order Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince DVDs from Amazon.com; if you do it right now you get a whopping 66% off the retail price. The Blu-ray version is 56% off. Also, coming out are the ultimate edition DVDs and Blu-rays for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets with 37% and 34% respective discounts (I just bought Edmund a Blu-ray one of these as a Christmas present and it looks AWESOME!). And there's even more, the new Harry Potter Years 1-6 Giftset is available for pre-order as well at 36% off for the DVD and 33% off for the Blu-ray!
UPDATE: Amazon.com is keeping their pre-order discounts but I'm not sure how long it will last. So don't delay or else you'll really pay--extra that is =P.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Widescreen Edition) [DVD]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Full-Screen Edition) [DVD]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince [Blu-ray]

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Ultimate Edition) [DVD]

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Ultimate Edition) [DVD]

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Ultimate Edition) [Blu-ray]

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Ultimate Edition) [Blu-ray]

Harry Potter Years 1-6 Giftset (Widescreen Edition) [DVD]

Harry Potter Years 1-6 Giftset (Full-Screen Edition) [DVD]

Harry Potter Years 1-6 Giftset [Blu-ray]

Here is a sneak peek at the first Deathly Hallows movie!



Deathly Hallows Preview 1

I got into Harry Potter when the third book was already out. I would read the books during class. I was so adamant and unabashed about reading the books in class my math teacher would ask me how I was liking them (presumably to embarrass me and get me to focus on her lesson) and I would answer truthfully that they were awesome!

When the fourth book came out I was at a summer camp with a bunch of girls I liked. I ignored them and finished reading the fourth book. Seriously, I ignored girls for Harry Potter!

When the fifth book came out a really close childhood friend of mine who I hadn't seen in two years was visiting me. I read the book in front of him the whole first day he was visiting and then finished up on the second day when he was leaving. I haven't seen him since.

When the sixth book came out I had just started college and had tons of homework. Instead of doing my homework I picked up the book and read it nonstop until I was finished without even eating the whole day. To top it off my dad and little brother who lived more than one thousand miles away were visiting me at college and I ignored them along with my homework. I almost failed two classes because the projects that were due were supposed to be built upon as the quarter progressed.

When the seventh book came out I couldn't wait for my copy to arrive so I read the poorly photographed pages online before Amazon even shipped out my book. I had really bad eyestrain afterwards!

Without Harry Potter I'd have never gotten into fantasy. While I waited for each book to come out I would read loads of other magnificent fantasy books and I have Jo Rowling and her boy wizard to thank for that! I tried reading Lord of the Rings and Narnia when I was younger but didn't like them. After reading Harry Potter I grew to appreciate and even love them.

When I wasn't reading I was working on my Harry Potter websites. I would skip lunch at school to go to the library and use the computers to work on US Harry Potter (now the Harry Potter Friendship Network) and Hogwarts Live. I even skipped tons of parties and ignored many invitations from friends (some were rather attractive) just to work on improving these websites. I spent all four days of my fall break one time fixing all the textual errors on HL. And who even knows how much time I spent promoting HL on forums, chatrooms, search engines, directories, blogs, topsites, social networks, etc.

For the first whole year I ran HL I paid for all costs of operation until in the fall of 2005 after trying a myriad of advertisers and adding loads of stuff to the Prefect's Lounge I was finally able to cover monthly upkeep. Which, is a really good thing cause I had just moved out on my own to start college. This meant a bunch of new and very major living expenses and at the time HL's $80 a month hosting was a lot to someone who only worked part-time. So, thanks to your love of Harry Potter and many generous donations over the years HL will still have many magical times ahead of it.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts you can edit your profiles. Don't know how to do this? First make sure you're logged in and then click on your character name in the top right hand corner of the blog next to Logout, Owl Post..., and Petition... Once you get to your profile page click the "Edit Profile" link next to your character name in the breadcrumb at the top.

So basically this poll is about what other details/options you'd like to see added to profiles.

Current details are: Real Name, Avatar, Birthday, Blood Purity, Wand, Location, Favorite Harry Potter Book, Favorite Harry Potter Character, and About/Bio.

I'm not going to list things like favorite quotes, favorite foods, favorite actors/movies, favorite authors, politics, religion, ethnicity, occupation, etc. cause you have 2,000 characters in your bio for all that stuff and I'd like to keep the main details fairly HP-themed or at least use them to make meaningful connections between users. I think we could benefit from some more roleplaying on here.

I'm not adding Favorite Books at this time cause we'll have a section for that later where you'll be able to pick your top five or so favorite books and then rate and review them.

Click here to vote on "What other profile details or options do you want?" poll »