Many players have petitioned or commented in chat about Live Chat not updating for them and it refreshing when they post. All of those users had been using Internet Explorer at the time, which is what causes it to not update quickly and post properly. So we suggest that you use Firefox while on here, the chat works fine on it.
Click here to download Firefox!
Also:
Click here to download Thunderbird!
PayPal Donations
If you make a donation via PayPal please do not cancel it by contacting your credit card company, you have 10 days to dispute a charge on PayPal. If for whatever reason you wish to cancel a donation and have not used your points yet please do so using the PayPal site and I'll be more than happy to refund your donation. When you cancel your payment via your credit card company I receive a nice little "Chargeback" notice. When this happens the transaction fee for the PayPal donation is taken out of the Hogwarts Live account, it is not refunded; meaning when you cancel this way HL loses money, please keep this in mind for future reference. There were ten chargebacks this month totaling $27. It appears that the people who did this had stopped playing the game but had used all their points already. Please keep this in mind before donating.
UPDATE (03/14/2008): Seriously, this is getting annoying, HL already received $57 (USD) in chargebacks this month. Please, if you make a donation by accident file a complaint/dispute requesting your funds back within 10 days of the transaction online at the PayPal Resolution Center or by calling their customer support at toll free at (888) 221-1161 in the USA or 08707 307 191 in the UK. The site currently relies completely on donations as we do not have ANY advertisers at the moment.
If you see any ads or popups (aside from the topsite buttons and the MoTD) either you need to clear your cache or you have spyware/adware on your computer and I suggest if you're a Windows user you download an antispyware a free program like Spybot-S&D or if you have the money Spy Sweeper. Also, a couple good free antivirus programs for Windows and Mac OS are ClamWin and ClamXav respectively.
UPDATE (03/14/2008): Seriously, this is getting annoying, HL already received $57 (USD) in chargebacks this month. Please, if you make a donation by accident file a complaint/dispute requesting your funds back within 10 days of the transaction online at the PayPal Resolution Center or by calling their customer support at toll free at (888) 221-1161 in the USA or 08707 307 191 in the UK. The site currently relies completely on donations as we do not have ANY advertisers at the moment.
If you see any ads or popups (aside from the topsite buttons and the MoTD) either you need to clear your cache or you have spyware/adware on your computer and I suggest if you're a Windows user you download an antispyware a free program like Spybot-S&D or if you have the money Spy Sweeper. Also, a couple good free antivirus programs for Windows and Mac OS are ClamWin and ClamXav respectively.
Let there be SPEED!!!!!
Hello everyone, as you can see, the site is running insanely faster. The network issue at the colo seems to be finally resolved which has helped a lot.
I will work on bringing most of the modules back online this weekend, as well as a special new module that I hope you will all love.
More on that later, but to give you a tantalizing hint, it's a new way to compete with everyone else on the site in a very potterish way.
Because so many people can't understand this, I'm going to state it as simply as I can.
Everything except for the mounts, forest, weapons/armor and Professors was taken out of the game so Edmund could clean up the site and update things where necessary.
SOME of it has come back. SOME of it has NOT. SOME of it will NEVER come back. Just be patient and stop asking in chat about every single thing, please. As Edmund stated, he is still working on bringing things back.
CLAN VAULTS will NEVER come back. Save your gold in Gringott's and get over it.
Anything that was taken away from you, will NOT be given back to you.
You have to earn/buy it all back.
STOP asking about stuff in chat and just be patient. Do NOT petition to ask where your stuff is or when you're going to get it back. We will not answer you. Just go and play the game..
Witchy
I will work on bringing most of the modules back online this weekend, as well as a special new module that I hope you will all love.
More on that later, but to give you a tantalizing hint, it's a new way to compete with everyone else on the site in a very potterish way.
Because so many people can't understand this, I'm going to state it as simply as I can.
Everything except for the mounts, forest, weapons/armor and Professors was taken out of the game so Edmund could clean up the site and update things where necessary.
SOME of it has come back. SOME of it has NOT. SOME of it will NEVER come back. Just be patient and stop asking in chat about every single thing, please. As Edmund stated, he is still working on bringing things back.
CLAN VAULTS will NEVER come back. Save your gold in Gringott's and get over it.
Anything that was taken away from you, will NOT be given back to you.
You have to earn/buy it all back.
STOP asking about stuff in chat and just be patient. Do NOT petition to ask where your stuff is or when you're going to get it back. We will not answer you. Just go and play the game..
Witchy
Missing Modules - Update
All dwellings have been removed, and before you ask about getting your gold and gems back from your dwellings, I should point out that your gold in bank, gold in hand, gems, and clan vaults have all also been reset.
The Marriage system will be back here shortly (one of the first things I'll restore) but all marriages and flirt points have been reset to nothing, which means everyone is currently a free agent once again.
I've finished the data optimizations I'm going to do for now, so it's time to start putting modules back. This will take a bit of time, as I'm going to check for updates on each one while I reinstall.
UPDATE - Basic Villages, Marriage and Jobs are back with the latest versions, remember, everyone is unemployed, and everyone is single, let the flirting mayhem begin!
The Marriage system will be back here shortly (one of the first things I'll restore) but all marriages and flirt points have been reset to nothing, which means everyone is currently a free agent once again.
I've finished the data optimizations I'm going to do for now, so it's time to start putting modules back. This will take a bit of time, as I'm going to check for updates on each one while I reinstall.
UPDATE - Basic Villages, Marriage and Jobs are back with the latest versions, remember, everyone is unemployed, and everyone is single, let the flirting mayhem begin!
Site Slowness
Believe it or not, the recent slowness this week is not related to any hardware or software problems on the server. From what I can tell the network block that the server is a part of has been under constant attack for the last several days. At this moment I do not believe that the HogwartsLive server is being directly targeted by the attackers, just happens to be the innocent bystanders in someone else's war.
We have a support ticket submitted to the collocation facility asking them to do something about this incredible latency, but as of yet they seem to be able to do nothing.
We have a support ticket submitted to the collocation facility asking them to do something about this incredible latency, but as of yet they seem to be able to do nothing.
New Guild Requirements
As part of the restructuring to make HL more efficient both speed-wise and resources-wise, guild requirements have been altered a bit.
A player still needs to be at least a Fourthyear in order to make a new guild, however...a guild MUST have at least 7 members IN ADDITION TO the Founder in order for the vaults to appear and be accessible. If membership drops below 7, the vault disappears. ADDED: This also means that the auto-rewards will not be issued to guild members in a guild unless the membership is at or above the required 7. Guilds are not there for single players to amass their own personal fortunes.
I would suggest that leaders of smaller clans speak with other smaller clan leaders and work out some kind of merge operation.
Vessa's Gem Exchange has also been removed until further notice.
And as your one and only warning:
If you create alternate accounts for the sole purpose of reaching the required membership, your guild will be deleted and you will NOT get your gold or gems back. I WILL be checking guilds for this.
A player still needs to be at least a Fourthyear in order to make a new guild, however...a guild MUST have at least 7 members IN ADDITION TO the Founder in order for the vaults to appear and be accessible. If membership drops below 7, the vault disappears. ADDED: This also means that the auto-rewards will not be issued to guild members in a guild unless the membership is at or above the required 7. Guilds are not there for single players to amass their own personal fortunes.
I would suggest that leaders of smaller clans speak with other smaller clan leaders and work out some kind of merge operation.
Vessa's Gem Exchange has also been removed until further notice.
And as your one and only warning:
If you create alternate accounts for the sole purpose of reaching the required membership, your guild will be deleted and you will NOT get your gold or gems back. I WILL be checking guilds for this.
Problems
Yes, I know that everyone is getting stuck in Call Stack Errors. I have emailed Edmund and so we just have to be patient and wait until he can stop RL to come fix it for us. Please don't petition anymore.
Dwellings Moved
As you have probably noticed, because some of the villages were removed, many people couldn't access their dwellings in them. Finally, we have moved all those dwellings to Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade: all flats and shacks were moved to Diagon Alley, and all farmhouses and castles were moved to Hogsmeade. Every dwelling from Knockturn Alley, the Ministry of Magic, Spinner's End, Number 12 Grimmauld Place, Ottery St. Catchpole, and Mount Olympus has been moved manually. Because we did this the long way, there might be a few mistakes, so if you can't find your shack or flat in Diagon Alley it might have mistakenly been moved to Hogsmeade (and vice versa), so before you go and petition that, please check around. If you DO have any problems or cannot find your dwelling, please petition and we'll look into it.
Live Chat
We are aware that the chats are messing up. Edmund has been working on it and it should be resolved soon. If you are experiencing these problems, you can go into your Preferences and turn the live chat off. We will make an announcement when it has been fixed.
Belated Congratulations
I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas, or whatever other holiday you celebrate. A belated congratulations to Poizun Acerbity who won the Hill of Beans Candy raffle and won an amazing 23,685 bertie botts beans!