Goodbye Pottermore

Pottermore is no more. I guess having the name “Potter” in the title was too limiting, since now the website is called “Wizarding World” and encompasses the “Fantastic Beasts” films as well as the Potter books and films. My reaction? Whatever.

I loved Pottermore for Rowling’s writing. I loved the story artwork from the Potter series, since those illustrations actually matched descriptions in the books and were reported to be verified by Rowling herself. For me, Pottermore was a worthy successor to Rowling’s very creative original website which felt like the author was personally communicating with us fans.

When Pottermore changed to become just another fan site, I was very disappointed. The content was trite and uninteresting to anyone over the age of 18. Often the writers demonstrated less understanding of Rowling’s created world than we normal fans did, even with their supposed connection to the author. Quite frankly, I stopped visiting the site.

Now it’s the Wizarding World. I’ve spend some time poking around and I am just as unimpressed as I was with the second iteration of Pottermore. The site seems to have even less content than it used to, and a lot of things are either broken — when I click the button to “join” the new fan club, I’m just taken to my profile — or listed as “coming soon,” which is very bad website design. If it wasn’t ready you shouldn’t have switched it on for public viewing.

So again. Whatever.

But about the fan club. I do want to join, if for no other reason than I’ve been a massive Potter fan since 1998 and I figure if anyone should be in a Harry Potter fan club, it’s me. Maybe I’m already signed up, since I do have the Wizarding World app installed on my phone. I have yet to discover any of the “spellbinding new content” which was promised, however. I did find some short bits of writing which rehash facts and content which any fan will already know. I also saw a film clip or two, but those are hardly new content.

Still stuck with … whatever.

That is, until I saw this whole subscription thing. It’s called Wizarding World Gold and I will say, I’m intrigued. I don’t know if I’m sold — I could get two Wizarding World Loot Crates for about the same price and those have a lot cooler stuff in them. But the Gold subscription does offer some interesting things. Just not for me.

You see, I don’t collect much Potter memorabilia myself, so I’m not going to be particularly interested in the pins. I already have all the ebooks so I don’t get added value from access to the series through the club. The special events won’t be happening anywhere near me here in Texas and I don’t expect to be flying to New York or San Francisco to see Cursed Child anytime soon, special access or discounts on tickets for those things don’t do me any good. As I said, I don’t collect Potter memorabilia so discounts at the Wizarding World shops won’t do me much good either.

So what has me intrigued?

FIrst of all, the video series called Wizarding World Originals. I’ve been on the set of the films and I was blown away by the craft of filmmaking at the vast scale of a Potter film. I love learning more about that process. I am pretty sure I would enjoy that video series.

But most of all, I want that journal. It’s called “Keys and Curios” and oh, just look at that cover, designed by none other than MinaLima. I love cool journals and this one looks awesome. That’s one bit of memorabilia I would love to own.

However, is it worth seventy-five bucks? Well, not for me, no. But I’m a 60-year-old teacher and theatre director, and I’ve been the editor in chief of the ultimate source for Potter world facts for the past twenty years. No matter how much I love that journal and want to watch that video series, I have to admit that I’m just not the person they’re trying to appeal to. If I had seventy-five dollars to spend on Potter stuff, I’d get two Loot Crates.

But I can easily imagine that this will be a great purchase for a lot of fans. The quality looks really good — did I mention the cover of the journal? — and if I still lived in Britain or regularly shopped for Potter merchandise, I would definitely get good value out of it.

And who knows? They do promise that there’s more to come. I think the best thing they could do is to take a page from Loot Crate’s playbook and include some collectibles as imaginative as the things you’ll find there. Shirts and bookends and keychains and props and scarfs and pendants and stuffed animals? Then even I would be tempted!

But as for the Wizarding World website itself, I expect I’ll visit it as often as I visited the second iteration of Pottermore. Which is never.

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