Harry Potter fans worldwide can now experience
the wizarding world as HP author J.K. Rowling
had imagined it, by going online and signing up
to enter PotterMore.
Below is a review of Pottermore, from my own standpoint,
reviewing Pottermore as it currently is now.
Review: From the moment you sign up for Pottermore,
to the moment in which you are able to log in, several hours pass in-between.
You go to Pottermore, enter your e-mail, go through a quick,
5-minute information input process, where you put in things
like your name and birthday, select one of three possible Pottermore
screen-names already created by Pottermore staff,
(Pottermore won't let you create your own log-in name,)
and then wait for an auto-sent e-mail that just verifies your e-mail address.
A few hours after that, another e-mail is sent to you,
confirming that you are ready to enter Pottermore.
The "main" Pottermore experience, where you relive the first Harry Potter book,
is best when you are reading the original book/e-book at the same time.
Three main additional features,
excluding the written bonus content by J.K. Rowling, are:
*Wizard Dueling
Review: Interesting but complicated.
The dueling process is easy enough to learn, in theory,
but still is a formidable challenge.
Plus: For some reason, when playing against another player,
I have cast my spell in under a minute, my opponent won't cast his in 10 minutes.
Final Grade: B-
*Potions
Review: Hard but fun.
If you add the wrong amount of one ingredient,
even if there is 20 ingredients, you fail instantly.
It doesn't help that you're being constantly timed.
Run out of time, and you fail instantly, too.
Final Grade: C+
*Common Rooms (chat rooms)
Review: A wonderful addition to Pottermore, which wasn't originally planned.
This lets Harry Potter fans across the world interact with each other while
experiencing Pottermore together.
One downside is Pottermore almost forces you to interact directly
with your house, and makes it hard to interact with other houses,
which you can only easily do through challenging them to Potions or Dueling.
Video Chat does not seem to be accessible through Pottermore, however.
Final Grade: A-
Pottermore itself is wonderful, mostly because of all the new information
hidden inside the "books", leaving fans with more then enough reasons
to visit Pottermore, and search for more hidden things to find and unlock,
for many months to come.