In honor of the DVD Release

Ok, by now I'm sure a lot of you are wondering why I've pretty much spent the last 24 hours straight coding for HogwartsLive. I felt that in honor of the DVD Release of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire this week, I felt it was time to put some grunt work in on HogwartsLive for some game enhancements. I was going to wait till I was done with all I had planned before posting this MoTD, but it's been slowing me down answering the same questions over..and over..and over..and over..and over.

Ok, here's what I've done so far.

I started by introducing new areas to the game:

The first new area I introduced to the game was the Ministry of Magic. the Ministry is available to all people who have reached at least the Witch/Wizard Level. The Bluerock Chapel (where you get married) has been relocated here. This means that you cannot get married until you have at least a Witch or Wizard.

Next I introduced Mount Olympus. A place for all those who have reached God/Goddess status. So far nothing special is there, but there will be special items located there in the near future.

Third I introduced Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley. A lot of the shops have been relocated to one of these 2 places. These are accessible from the beginning of the game, and Diagon Alley is now the starting point up until Witch/Wizard.

Third years and above are allowed to visit Hogsmeade Village and the shops there. Maddam Puddlefoots (where you go to flirt) has been moved where it belongs here. If you would like to Flirt in this game you will have to get up to 3rd year status before you can start. The Farm, Mill and Textile Mill are now located here as well, so if you have a job this is where you go.

I've also introduced Spinner's End, a place where only people of Witch/Wizard or higher who are of the Evil alignment can go, and Number 12 Grimmauld Place, a place where only people of Witch/Wizard or higher who are of the Good alignment can go.

Then I made modifications to the Race System. You may only go to the common room of the hogwarts house you are sorted in. This means if you are a Ravenclaw you can only go to Ravenclaw, no travelling to Gryffindor or Slytherin. All shops that were in the common rooms have been moved to other areas, I encourage you to look around as it would take far too long for me to tell you where each and every shop is, but just FYI (the evil shops are either in Spinner's End or in Knockturn Alley).

All shops that were in one of the hogwarts houses have been moved as follows. If you had a house in Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, you can find your house in Hogsmeade. If you had a house in Slytherin you can find your house in Knockturn Alley. If you had a house in Ravenclaw, you can find it in Diagon Alley. For the moment, the houses that were in the Great Hall are located in Hogwarts.

Also on the race system, on First Year when you are asked to choose which house you would like to be on, this choice is now lasting, no longer will you be switching houses each VE. You will not be asked what house you want to be in again until you reach Witch/Wizard. Once you reach Witch/Wizard there will be new loyalties you can select. The only one that is working right now is "Death Eater." Becoming a Death Eater will make you Evil (even if you are really really really good).

Other new loyalties to come include "Auror in Training (you will have to be an AIT for 3 consecutive VE's before the option for Auror will be given to you)", "Unspeakable in Training (you will have to be a UIT for 15 consecutive VEs before the option for Unspeakable will be given to you)", "Gringotts Spell-Breaker", and other new races that we haven't completely ironed out the details for yet. Each will have it's own advantages and disadvantages.

In the forest you can now find a special called a Phoenix. In order to get a Phoenix you will have to be of Good alignment, and in order to keep the Phoenix you will have to keep getting more good points, 15 additional good points per VE.

I am working on some new specials for Evil people to counterballance the Phoenix. One I am working on is the possibility of creating a horcrux when you kill someone in the PvP areas. The Horcrux could be used to stop you from going to the underworld, but you will get something like 200 evil points for creating one.

This isn't quite ALL the enhancements I've made, but as you can tell this has already made our longest MOTD entry pretty much ever, and I have a lot more enhancements to make, but one more thing.

There was a glitch this morning unrelated to what I was working on that caused everyone who had a pet from the pet shop to not be able to do anything on the site (it was quite annoying), the only way I could fix it was to purge all pets. There were over 800 people with Falcons in the game before the purge so please... stop sending in petitions asking for your Falcons back, they aren't coming back. You can buy a Snowy Owl, which has the same stat effects as the Falcon, from Diagon Alley.