Hogwarts Live Blog

To all witches and wizards:

October 31st (Halloween) is now officially Staff Appreciation Day. Show your support to the HL staff in any way you can. Even if that means listening to them for a bit (I'm looking at you truant students out there =P).

Just please try and be extra nice to our staff on that special day otherwise I will smite you with a mighty thunderbolt.

Happy Almost Spring! At least to those in the Northern Hemisphere. xD

As the temperatures start to rise and the snowstorms venture forth with their last hurrah of the season, our servers have migrated to more illustrious surroundings to continue the circle of life known as HogwartsLive.

Unlike the the long and arduous trek for thousands upon thousands of birds, ocean creatures, and them animals in Africa who are forced to migrate to find water, the process of migrating servers is usually pretty quick and painless. This time however, it seems that some of you may have gotten lost in the Upside Down, as Poly puts it.

Maybe you log in to find a chat that is hours old with only one or two other people? Which is kinda normal tbh, so scratch that one. But maybe posts have disappeared? Or maybe you find yourself all alone in some parallel universe version of Hogwarts? MaYbE yOu CaN't EvEn LoG iN!?

Unfortunately, we can't magically fix it for you even though we're supposed to be all like Witches and Wizards and stuff. But DON'T PANIC!! YOU, yes YOU, can perform all the magic needed to fix this for yourself! So grab your towel, click the link at the end of this post and prepare to be amazed! Mobile instructions included, for a limited time! (not really limited, that's just a sales pitch) If however, you do not want to attempt this yourself, the problem will correct itself soon.

For those who appreciate a more technical explanation, there's something called DNS. This is like GPS for browsers so they know where to go when you type in a website name. So what happens during migration is, the virtual address of the website gets all mixed and muddled up and sometimes it takes longer for some people's internets to find it again. (Or that might be something I made up entirely because it sounds good and I have no idea what I'm talking about.) (Except that DNS does really exist and it does have something to do with finding and accessing websites.)

tl;dr If HL is all weird, it will fix itself soon or you can clear your DNS cache. Instructions here:

https://buffered.com/tutorials/how-to-flush-dns-cache/

Thanks for playing!

In accordance with the latest blog that has been reposted, if you see something inappropriate or disruptive in chat then please petition for help. Even if there is a staff member online, we are players too and can't monitor the site or chats every minute. We would appreciate it if you can help us help you.

Look over the rules in the FAQs again carefully and don't be afraid to send a detailed petition about the problem. We want to establish and keep and friendly environment for all ages to interact with.

Thanks and enjoy your time on HogwartsLive.

You see Hagrid carrying Holiday Trees to the Common Rooms.

The biggest, sparkliest, twinkliest tree belongs to the Hufflepuff clan!
Many of the other halls also sport beautifully decorated trees in their windows.

Congratulations, Hufflepuff! You keep the House buff until the end of January!

Hey Everyone,

I'm giving away a Hogwarts Live T-shirt!

One lucky player will get to don their very own, custom, Hogwarts Live T-shirt from hogwartslive.spreadshirt.com! :)

Just head on over to the Candy Raffle page under the Global section on the left side of the site and exchange your every flavor beans for raffle tickets.

Beans can be won through special events or acquired through the Prefect's Lounge under Buy Candy.

This raffle ends at the end of July.

Personal attacks are NOT ALLOWED. A personal attack is any comment that is negative toward a persons real life. No matter how mean their role-play character may be to you, there is no excuse to bring their real life into the conversation to attack them. It should have to go unsaid, but due to a sudden increase of people feeling this is for some unkown reason acceptable, that this rule applies to attacking the real life children of players. If you decide you feel it necessary to stoop so low and bring their child(ren) into it, you will instantly be muted for 3 RL days. If after that mute, you continue to make such comments, it will be a week long ban.

We received a request to ask for your help for one of our longtime players, Catherine.

"My father was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. His final wish is to go to Disney Land, but with all his special medical care needs, we can't do it alone. My sister has created a "fundme.com" thing and I know that a lot of HLers are good people at heart and I was hoping to maybe get the chance to put the link here. If, that is, allowed.

http://www.gofundme.com/8rb35h78z4

That's the link. Even if you can't donate, could you consider spreading it out a bit for us? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time."

Thank you for any help you can give!

As I'm sure you all have noticed by now, there is a Holiday Tree in each House's Common Room. Players can go to their Common Room and help decorate it by using forest fights, gold and/or gems. You can check to see who has the biggest, sparkliest, twinkliest tree in every village, right above the chat. The House with the best tree at the end of the year will earn the House buff for the entire month of January. The winning House will be announced sometime after midnight (as soon as we can).

Good luck!

Congratulations to Slytherin for winning the Holiday Tree Contest! They will enjoy the House Buff for the whole month of January!

There is no one hacking HL accounts or your IP addresses despite what a player trying to cause panic may be telling you. Their situation was caused by account sharing.

I'd like to take this time to remind you of the risks of sharing accounts with other players.
-When you share your password with another player, they can share it with anyone they want to.
-They can change your password and account information.
-They can access personal information you may have sent to someone else in owls.
-If the person logging into your account has four accounts, and logs into yours making it 5, if yours is the highest VE count on their IP it will be locked.
-If they are muted and get on your account to chat, your account will be muted.
-If they get banned and you are on their IP address, your account will be banned also.
-If they are a banned player, and log into your account to evade their ban, your account will be banned.

We will not help you recover a lost account due to sharing your information. This information should be kept private. I'd advise anyone who has been sharing accounts to change their passwords so they do not end up in the same situation as others before have.

Not everyone online is as trustworthy as you may think, they can tell you anything they want without you knowing if it is true or not. I would not trust anyone with your password.

Thank you to everyone who was kind enough to spare some money for Elijah's family in their time of need!