Do NOT expect a level playing field on Pottermore. This has been a very sad problem on Pottermore since the dawn of Beta. If there's a cheat to be found, someone will find it, share it, and before you know it honesty either dies, leaves or gets left in the dust. My compatriots and I are being left in the dust yet again.
From the moment the Quill Challenge was announced in order to gain people to enjoy/Beta test/babysit/troubleshoot the site, there has been cheating. The Pottermore Terms and Conditions during the Beta period EXPRESSLY forbade multiple accounts. Well since when did rules with no consequences ever work?
As mentioned in the previous post, when people were banned during Beta, they just used the spare accounts they made during the Quill Challenge. These accounts were brought to the attention of Pottermore, again, with screen shots. Not a thing was done. By then, thankfully, the role players were keeping their plays PG as most of them actually realized they'd gotten too carried away. The use of multiple accounts had more dire effects in the games portion of Pottermore.
People would use these extra accounts to "visit" their competing Houses and beg potion ingredients and cauldrons from generous new folk who just wanted to fit in and be nice. These ingredients would be used to A. Melt a cauldron on purpose in order to cost the competition House Points or B. would be sent to their main account so that they had a never ending supply of free ingredients.
For example, a person happily sorted into Gryffindor has a second account that was sorted into Hufflepuff. This, dishonorable Gryff uses his Hufflepuff account to melt cauldrons which costs Hufflepuff house points. He then begs the other nice Hufflepuffs to give him ingredients which he gifts to his Gryffindor account so that he has a never ending supply of ingredients for his potion and points making for Gryffindor. If any members take offense at being called dishonorable for this activity, well, in a word, tough. That's what it is. It might not be so dishonorable if you told those Hufflepuffs that you were out of galleons (provided you actually ARE out of galleons) and needed ingredients for your Gryffindor account. Then the Hufflepuffs could choose to help you out of the kindness in their souls. If you're one of the people who try to blame Pottermore because their software allows you to do this, no, you're still behaving dishonorably. "...It is OUR choices that make us who we are..."
Another multiple account cheat that is currently in action, has been reported by multiple members and which is being ignored by Pottermore is a Wizard Duel cheat in which a person uses their main account to repeatedly beat their other accounts in direct duel challenges. One account throws a low point spell on purpose and the main account easily beats it with a higher point spell. They can do this all day long with no time consuming losses or draws or rematches and amass 5,000 or more dueling points a day. This is not only unfair to the houses they are competing against but it is horribly unfair to the honest members of their own house that they are passing on the leader board.
Screen shots of the Recent Activity feed and common room comments pages clearly showing this type of cheat in action were, are and apparently always will be ignored by Pottermore. One member recently received a reply from Pottermore regarding a member of her house using the multiple account dueling cheat. Their response to her note was: "We appreciate your feedback, however please understand that Pottermore is a free online digital reading experience. While there are some simple games you can play, Pottermore is very much about the books: being able to experience Harry's story in a new way and discover all the additional information that JK Rowling has written. I hope you are enjoying Pottermore." (See more about Pottermore being a free online digital reading experience in an upcoming post.)
While it is easy to spot this type of cheat in the recent activity feeds, Pottermore SHOULD have the technology to tell what computers where are involved by their IP addresses, even blogs have that technology for pete's sake. This lack of concern regarding A. members breaking their Terms and Conditions by having multiple accounts and B. using those accounts to cheat at the games discourages people from playing or teaches them they can cheat their friends as well as their competition for their own personal points gain. Pottermore's lack of regard for the rampant cheating going on now using multiple accounts would explain why no accounts were banned and no points were removed from the more serious Potions cheat during Beta when people were using 3rd party software to speed up their potion times. Once again, this cheat was reported via the Beta button, Help button and screen shots emailed to Pottermore. While Pottermore did, eventually, after months, manage to block the cheat, they did nothing about those who exploited it.
Pottermore recently updated their Terms and Conditions and it is still against the rules to have more than one Pottermore account, and still that rule means nada. Rules without consequences are just corporate-cover-your-own-butt-boiler plate.
For anyone wishing to play the games on Pottermore you need to play them once in a while for fun. The unfortunate truth is that there is so much cheating you stand little chance of actually helping your house, making it to the leader boards or even staying on the leader boards if you are an honest person.
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