Hogwarts Live Blog

I'm working on something that may potentially speed up the site right now on the code side of things, so please don't lose heart. You can expect it in a week or two depending on my schedule. On the hardware side I'll be purchasing an extra hardrive, if this speeds things up I'll get a another one after that.

Now for the warnings, if you're going to cyber do it somewhere else where no one but the parties involved can see you. This site is rated 13+, not 18+! Also, for you pedophiles out their if you even try to proposition a minor we will immediately ban you and send your ISP a nice message about how you committed a sex crime, which is in direct violation of our Terms of Use. They may in turn suspend your internet access and even contact your local authorities.

Live Chat is now back, it was temporarily disabled as an exercise because some people were suggesting that the slowness of the site was a direct result of the live chat module, by disabling live chat, that theory was proven wrong (as I knew it would)

Also, a reminder of the way things have been for over a year so people stop petitioning saying that the math on temp hp is wrong (because it is not).

Your current HP cannot exceed 50% more then your max HP. This means that if, for example, you have a max HP of 100, and you go and try to buy temp hp, the maximum temporary hp you will have when everything is said and done is 150.

There is no faulty logic that says if you give Cedrik 1000 gems at 5 gems per hp that you only get 50 hp. In fact, the change to cedrik that WAS put in place is that if you attempt to give Cedrik too many gems, he will actually give you back any excess (read the message, go to Cedrik, try to pay him 1000 gems for HP and you will almost undoubtedly get the following message:

You place 1000 gems on the counter. Cedrik realizes that you have asked him for far too much health, and graciously gives you some of the gems back. You drink the potion Aberforth hands you in exchange for your gems, and.....

Now the only problem that IS with this message, is that in one place it says Cedrick and another place says Aberforth. I shall fix this textual bug this weekend (and attempt to standardize everything at Aberforth).

Also be sure when you are doing this test to look at the number of gems you have both before and after, you'll see that you did not lose 1000 gems in the process.

I guess there has been some confusion about some things regarding the HP in the game. First off I had asked Edmund to reset the HP, we're trying to balance the game here. This means that I approved all these changes, and I think they are good ideas, they make the game more balance and give weaker players a better chance of moving up.

Here's what was done:
We took out the ability to buy permanent HP.
We reset everybody's HP.
We forced you to reallocate VE points.
We removed the gem vault along with the vitality option.

This means you now have to use VE points for perm HP. This makes it so you have to balance your stats, no more people with 50K HP who can't be touched, which makes using VE points for HP actually worth doing. Also, there are many other places for you to store your gems, the gem vault was one of the aspects of the site that was slowing it down. I do realize this also makes it more difficult for high VE players to move up in the world as they can't just go to the Dueling Club and kill everyone with lower stats than them anymore; they'll actually have to work at leveling up. But what about all those weaker players you were picking on who got discouraged by constantly losing? It's still likely the more experienced player will win but it's not as definite as it was before, meaning PvP is now more fair. I understand this makes the game a bit more difficult to play for these higher ranked players, but this is the best way to level the playing field, plus as the veteran players you should welcome a challenge, nothing in life worth having is easily earned.

If you have any suggestions or complaints please post them in the Suggestions Forum.

Using this forum helps me better organize your concerns. Do not petition for help if you're going to voice a complaint or a suggestion. The site above is checked more regularly by me than the petitions. It's difficult to login here when I get a torrent of owls each time I just want to check up on what's going on and no I don't check my owls whenever I login so please be patient if I haven't replied to you yet.

Again, if you have any suggestions or complaints regarding changes made to the game do not owl or petition them post them in the Suggestions Forum, which is the easiest way for me to organize and keep record of your input. Thanks.

I posted up the some choice petitions and owls I received in 2006 over at the Hogwarts Live Hate Mail Page.

If you guys think it's funny please do us a favor and Digg It.

EDIT: I fixed the Hate Mail page so you can access it even while you're logged in.

Here is a reminder of the site rules so no one has any excuse to not follow them. This is the version used by all Staff so please do not question if it is not in another part of the site. And please be sure to read through them even if you think you already know what they are; something might have changed. And for those that do not know, Staff is anyone with a yellow symbol in front of their name.

Reasons for muting:

1. Fighting: I do not mean RP fighting, I mean verbal assaults. Violence is NOT muteable unless it is a REAL threat. Roleplaying fighting is not a threat.
2. Sex and PDA: Use your common sense- we are a PG 13 site, half of the things done here should not be done and this WILL be enforced.
3. Evading the Filter: If a word shows up as !@#$ when it posts, do NOT change it so others can read it. Using foreign languages in open chat is also considered evading. Don't do it.
4. Drugs, alcohol and other bannable subjects. Any reference to drug use, alcohol use other than site-related, cutting, suicide or other forms of self-mutilation will not be tolerated. There is no need for any of that on this site.
5. Rape: This will NOT happen on this site. This includes any references to rape.
6. SPAM: Ok here is the tuffy. We have said before that anything more then 3 characters is SPAM. But in all reality we do NOT mute for this. Only if the person is taking it to extremes such as:.
!Dementor AuroraBorealis says, "dfkjlsdhgkjfkjghfmnvcm,vnfkghrouityerioutyjkgvnmc,vnfdj"
Get the point? Good.. However, please try to keep extra letters/symbols to a minimum. It CAN mess the page up for some players. Smilies are included in the no more than 3 guideline.
7. Link SPAM and Messenger addresses and emails: This includes other personal info such as phone numbers, addresses, myspace profiles, etc. Some people post these things in open chats. They are not to be there. If you want to give it to a friend that ASKS for it, OWL it. And no random owling of players to advertise other sites. We ban for that. This is why we have a link exchange. Please use it.
8. Advertising your clan in open chat: This is ok in the clan waiting place. But it has no place in Diagon or Hogwarts.
9. Personal Attacks: This is the offense that makes me angry, bringing someones personal life onto this site to attack them. Leave outside information outside.
10. Cheating and exploitation of glitches: If you find a glitch or bug in the game, please petition it. If you are caught telling other players of the glitch, you may be muted and/or banned.

In the end, listen to the admins and other staff, do not argue with them. If you have an issue with a staffer please Petition for Help so another Staffer can handle/look into it. If instead you decide to lash out at them, disregard their authority or otherwise disrespect them you will be punished.

These rules are made so everyone can enjoy their time here on HL. Please abide by them so all players can have fun.

Just to clarify what IS and what is NOT allowed as far as content... NO sexual comments and NO innuendo. NONE. Doing either will get you a warning and depending on severity, a mute. No private body part naming. No kicking, pinching, hitting, licking, poking, tapping, touching, or ANY other verb you can think of to said body parts. Balls and nuts have been refiltered. No using these two words or any other regular word in a way that could be deemed inappropriate by staff. Staff STILL has the final say on what is suitable for chat and what is not, so if you are warned, please do not argue in chat. Any other words that have been recently removed from the filtered list WILL go back on if they are abused. Please use common sense. You may petiton if you feel you were wrongly warned.

Everyone needs to stop contacting Hailey regarding the problems with hp and attack/defense. As much as she would like to, she CANNOT fix it. EDMUND has to fix it. As I said before, he is aware of the problem and is handling it. I'm sorry if it's not fast enough for you all, but he DOES have a real job and an outside life. BE PATIENT.

HP has been removed from Cedrik and you can no longer buy or have extra hp. Have a nice day!

HOWEVER, Edmund has reset everyone's hp and reset everyone's ve points so they can be reallocated. He has also done this really neat mathematical equation so everyone actually has better stats than what they had before. Leveling really should not be affected anymore so feel free to play as you were before. (I have tested both the forest and pvp and had no trouble whatsoever.)

EDIT: We are aware that there is a problem with the formula and have let Edmund know. Please do not send in any more petitions as we are working on correcting it.

As Edmund explained in his last MotD, the user_preferences tables are the reason for the site slowness/crashes. He has decided to reset these more frequently to help prevent this from happening.

As Gringott's gem vaults and friend lists are part of the user preferences, it has also been decided to remove these from the system for now. By removing these extras, we may be able to prevent having to reset other things that are affected, such as pets and alignment. Since pets and alignment can affect game play, we believe this is the best solution at this time.

Thanks again to Edmund for all his hard work :)

Before we get a bunch of petitions complaining, we have partially reset the module_userprefs table again, this time on purpose and with some exceptions.

Your alignment, fairydragons, horcruxes, phoenixes, and bertie botts beans should be intact, other settings that use the module_userprefs table will have reset. As you can see this results in a significant increase in site speed, so we may be doing resets like this every month or two to keep the site fast until the new version is ready.

On the note of the new version of HogwartsLive, due to several problems with LoGD both in it's highly restrictive license, and it's (so-extensible-that-it-is-very-inefficient codebase), we have decided to write the new game from scratch, using no LoGD code whatsoever. This will allow a much more Potter Universe oriented game, and it will (since we don't need support for 3rd party modules as everything is going to be written ourselves), be far more efficient in it's code. The hope is that this will lead to a much more scalable game then LoGD has allowed. More information and the early alpha version to come.

Also, I posted a MoTD last night asking for reviews of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it doesn't need to be much, just a few sentences, or as detailed as you want (a few paragraphs) but you have just 3 more hours (extending the deadline another hour) to get those reviews in.

Everyone who submits a review will receive a special Edmund's Alchemy prize that will never be available for everyone else, so hurry up and join this exclusive club.