So I’ve been playing on Pottermore for a few days now and these are my quibbles:
1. The Sorting Hat should ask you which House you prefer (doesn’t mean it will sort you there, but the real Sorting Hat does ask). They also might want to tweak their random question algorithm a bit too because I noticed most of the concrete questions I received were in relation to how important knowledge is to me instead of something more balanced between the values of the houses.
2. There are two major games so far (not counting the hide and seek elements in the chapter sections), which are essentially very similar in type of game. First you have Charms where you have to hit letters with a certain amount of accuracy and speed to be successful. Then there is Potions, which again, you have to be quick and accurate to complete. I know that most sites that have games try to vary the skills necessary to complete each game. Perhaps the next major gaming feature could be something like Magical Creatures or Defense Against the Dark Arts, which could have aspects of strategy and puzzle solving instead of speed and accuracy. Then again, perhaps the repetition of game skill type is to keep traffic down because people who aren’t successful at speed/accuracy games will just stop coming.
3. Navigation could be a bit more straight forward. Maybe it was a color vision problem and/or sizing problem, but it took way too long for me to realize I had arrows that I could navigate between chapters and sections. I kept going back to the section of the site with the chapter progression bar to access things for the longest time.
4. The name generator. I understand its purpose, but I think that it’s a bit awkward that two people have friended me on Pottermore and I’m not sure who they are. I know I know them given their locations and houses, but there’s about five people on my Facebook who they could be and that seems a bit off in terms of safety.I would like to know what to nickname though, so perhaps what we need is a way for you to give yourself your own nickname that only people you request friendships from can see? That way we can have a means to double check each other on who is who for those who might post a Pottermore name to FB where it could be private and safe security-wise but people might forget to clue you into which username goes with who. You know what I mean? There’s got to be a way to do this to keep kids safe, but not be confusing at the same time.
Other than that, I can see where the site is trying to go for now and it seems promising. I’m hoping some of the things I talked about get worked out as the site progresses. I just want a game I can be successful at and to know which friend is what really.
