Pottermore

Yes, as the title suggests, this is about Harry Potter. But it is not a word of my creation. Pottermore is the most current Harry Potter project from J.K Rowling. As she mentioned previously, she would no longer be writing a new story about Harry Potter. But that does not mean that she will let her wonderful creation die. And Pottermore is an official website created for Harry Potter universe and Harry Potter fans even after the end of the books and the movies.

The website is selling Harry Potter books in ebook and audio version. Other than that, the rest of the content is purely for the pleasure of the fans. No money is required to access the rest. One just need to register and to prevent cyberbullying, after registering, we are offered with few nicknames to choose. In case you are wondering how on earth there would be millions and millions of nicknames which are related to Harry Potter, the nicknames contain numbers. So the same nickname may be shared by many people with the number as the difference eg. harrypotter01 and harrypotter02.

So what is the rest of the content? We are able to follow the stories from the books and each book is broken down to its chapters. Unfortunately, only book 1 is completed =x Each chapter is broken down to about 2-4 scenes. Now now.. the main focus is not to go through the story (after all, who does not know Harry Potter and his stories?). We "immerse" to the story as one of the students. In each scenes, we are supposed to find items (to collect) and clues. Among the items are several new manuscripts written by J.K Rowling. Just to name a few: a bit of history of Petunia and Vernon Dursly (they actually met with James and Lily Potter), a bit of background story about Professor McGonagall, more detailed information about wands (each core type and wood type has different symbolisms), and more detailed information about 4 Houses of Hogwarts. 

Being in Harry Potter universe is not complete without having a wand or being sorted. And two thumbs up for the selection of the wand as well as the sorting ceremony. In order for the wand to choose the owner, we are presented with 7 questions. For the sorting, we are presented with 7 questions (out of possible 20+ questions). Once you get a wand or get sorted, you cannot repeat. And unlike unofficial mini games/quizzes which we can more or less "choose" answers so that we get the house/wand of our choice, it is impossible to do so here! Take the sorting as an example, there are many questions whose possible answers are more or less than 4 to choose from. Thus it is not possible to guess "aah this option means Gryffindor, that option is Slytherin" and so on. To add on the realism, just like the Sorting Hat may ask the students for their preference, in the event of a tie between few house, there will be an eigth question asking which house you prefer.

Despite the nice new write ups about the various wand cores and woods, I am not too excited about the wands as there is not much use to differentiate the various wands (at least within Pottermore). The Sorting, however, is brilliant. It leads to House Cup competition. Unfortunately, as of now, we can only earn points from duelling and potion brewing minigames. 

Unfortunately the duelling is disappointing. I was expecting something like moving the mouse cursor to follow a pattern for a spell and how "potent" the spell is depends on how "nice" the wand is being waved. Nah it is nothing like that. The mechanics for the spell are just clicking (or pressing keyboard) when the circle surrounding the letter is at its largest. Phui.. While there are many spells, each spell has a sort of "maximum" points no matter how good you are at doing the mini game. This ends up forcing everyone to use the "strongest spell" i.e Petrificus Totalus. So why bother coming out with so many spells then -_- I was expecting that the how strong a spell is would be decided by how complicated to draw the spell and by how "perfect" we execute the spell.

Surprisingly, the potion brewing is much more interesting (and challenging). It involves adding the correct ingredient at the correct amount in the correct order, grinding ingredients to fine powder, heating the cauldron at right temperature for the correct amount of time, stirring in the correct direction for the correct number of times and finally, a wave of wand. It is challenging initially as you don't know what ingredients are which (you have to keep opening the recipe book to see what picture represents which ingredients) and the HELP does not really explain the mechanics well. The temperature control is the hardest. And there is a time limit to make the potion too (!!). And just like in the book, if something goes wrong, the whole cauldron may explode and house points are deducted. I think this feature is awesome.

I admire J.K Rowling for her work. The new original content is simply amazing especially the explanation about 20+ woods which characterise the wands and the welcome letter for each House. As you are sorted into a house, you will get a welcome letter from the House's Head Prefect. Reading all 4 Houses (obviously from other website, not from Pottermore as it is not possible to even retry your sorting), it is amusing to see how Rowling is able to write from the different point of views: how each House is boasting its own achivement and playing down other House's strengths. After reading all 4, you will realise that all the description is realistic. Everyone has their strenghts and weaknesses. You will not feel that Gryffindor is the best, Slytherin is the evil, and the other 2 (Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff) are mere spectators like in the movie and books.

For example, I am sorted to Ravenclaw, the House of the intelligents, the most individual, and the most competitive (when it comes to exam). However we respect different eccentricities of different individuals/personalities. We see Gryffindor as being a show off and is not that "good" as they do not respect people who are different from them. And we are a bit arrogant with our intelligence (we do not have secret way to reach the common room, the door knob will present us with different questions all the time and we are confident that the "idiots" from other Houses will not be able to answer the questions).

Based on the welcome letter of Hufflepuff, although it is generally regarded as the nicest and most humble House, we can see the sense of pride in them too. They pride themselves as the House which produces the least number of Dark Wizards and as the House with the best security and had no intruders over 1000 years (their security arrangement is knock on the correct barrels to the correct rhythm.. doing the wrong thing causes you to be doused in vinegar).

Slytherin's welcome letter is interesting too. They are not evil per se. They are just willing to achieve their greatness in whatever ways (which includes dirty, dishonest ways). Unlike the Ravenclaw who see one another as competitors when it comes to exams, there is a greater sense of camaraderie among the Slytherins. And the funniest words (because of the sense of pride and the sarcasm) in Slytherin's letter are:

 "Here’s a little-known fact that the other three houses don’t bring up much: Merlin was a Slytherin. Yes, Merlin himself, the most famous wizard in history! He learned all he knew in this very house! Do you want to follow in the footsteps of Merlin? Or would you rather sit at the old desk of that illustrious ex-Hufflepuff, Eglantine Puffett, inventor of the Self-Soaping Dishcloth? 

At the first glance, Pottermore seems awesome. With the graphic, sound effects, and animation, clearly a huge effort has been poured in to make this possible. However, I completed the whole book 1 in less than a weekend. I am waiting for the rest now. I am more interested in new writings from J.K Rowling rather than the minigames or other contents. Perhaps the developers need to come up with something much better to retain fans' interest.