Hogwarts Live Blog

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.

Tomorrow the Wizards.FM panel will sit down and record a discussion about Deathly Hallows, what we liked, what we didn't like, what we are still confused about, a general conversation about Deathly Hallows and we want your help!

Email your opinions and reviews of Deathly Hallows to wizardcast@wizards.fm, or Owl them to me, or to SerenityRose, and we may read your review or opinion on the air tomorrow, or if you want to really be heard call us toll free in the USA at 1-866-486-4716 and leave your review in a minute and a half or less.

You can also record your review on your computer and email them to us at the address above, however you can get your review to us, get it to us before 6 p.m. Pacific time tomorrow night and we will incorporate as many of your reviews of Deathly Hallows in with our reviews as possible.

As an aside, but related note, you may have noticed that the Alchemy Lab has once again vanished from HogwartsLive, be on the look out for the innagural episode of "The Common Room Fire" on Wizards.FM, the Wizard's Webcast Network and another chance at a new fabulous prize from Edmund's Alchemy Lab soon!

Congratulations to everyone who earned the Alchemy Lab prizes for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

When you give us your review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, be sure to let us know either in the voicemail or email or owl or whatever what your HogwartsLive name is. Every reviewer selected to be a part of the show will win a special exclusive prize here on HogwartsLive. This prize will only be available to those who give us a review of the show and ONLY available for this show, so if you want the prize, get those reviews in by tomorrow. Tell us why you loved it, tell us why you hated it, ask your questions that you wish Rowling would have answered in the book, tell us your favorite parts, whatever you wish, we just want this next show to be all about you!

You guys must really spend a lot of time on HL, at least that's what the statistics show. I hope you're doing that cause you really love the site and not just because you have nothing better to do! Not that there is anything wrong with being perpetually bored out of your mind (as I always am). Any-who read this post about us being #3:
People Spend A Lot Of Time On Hogwarts Live

Seriously though you all should give up on your real lives entirely so we can be #1 or as they say in Japan, ichiban!

Again, I'd like to apologize for the continued problems regarding accessing the game and loss of character data. I'll try to keep closer tabs on the site to make sure it doesn't go down for as long as it did the other day. Thanks for everyone's consideration, hopefully the server issues will be sorted out and we can all go back to enjoying the game, and maybe introduce some new fun stuff, instead of praying that the site doesn't crash.

The following people have each won 20,000 points via the Candy Raffle:

Fourthyeargirl Watsonne (Ticket 4484)
Goddess DarkFairyNenI (Ticket 3565)
!TehMostLurvely WitchyWoman (Ticket 131)
King Tom (Ticket 5288)
Archtitaness Sweetdemon (Ticket 6031)
Overlord LeoWyatt (Ticket 4838)
Isian Priestess Yaris (Ticket 2147)
KissMeQuick HazelnuttKookie (Ticket 2458)
Fourthyeargirl SHUTURFACEFOREVER (Ticket 7819)
Sorceror Shalak (Ticket 5219)

If your points were not properly added please let me know.

Thanks. ^^

I'd like to take this time to wish Alchemist Edmund (Nick) a very Happy Birthday! Please don't forget to thank him for all the hard work he does for the site (like keeping it alive, fixing it when it's dead, etc.). :)

The worst crashes all appear to happen at night (I know the crashes during the day seem very bad, but the crashes at night usually require someone at the colocation facility to physically restart the machine, very bad), as such we will be shutting down the site tonight and leaving it off overnight. We can keep a closer eye on the crashes during the day (when our eyes are open to keep on them).

I will be shutting hogwartslive down to prevent system failure tonight at 10:30 pacific time, and launch it back up tomorrow morning as early as possible.

I apologize for the inconvenience, but it is better then having more data loss.

I've removed all accelerator functionality from the php installation in hopes that if the server itself isn't running quite so fast it won't crash as often until I can fix a permanent solution. I shall be spending my birthday weekend (happy birthday to me) this weekend trying to reinstall everything and see if it solves the issue permanently, in the mean time, hopefully with the accelerators off the site may run slightly slower but may not crash, I hope.

I will restore what I can of deleted accounts on Sunday, so please bear with us until then. Thank you for your continued patience.

All User Preferences were reset again. This includes Friends, Squires, Pets, Alignment, Charm Display, Player Kills, the ability to reset PvP opt out option until after your next ve, Default Commentary Colors and possibly other assorted small things that I can't remember right now. EDIT: This also includes Special Skills, Lumberyard Stats and Quarry (stone) stats.

I do not know any other details at the moment but as soon as I find out, I will post another announcement.

Please do not petition asking for an stats to be restored as they won't be.