Because this is the definitive Harry Potter podcast, this is Mugglecast episode 224 for November 13, 2011.

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Welcome to Mugglecast episode 242. It's a big episode because the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 DVD is now available.

And we're here to talk about it, plus a lot of other very interesting news, actually, to talk about big news about the theme park, big news about the future, you know, all that.

And more Pottermore. And more Pottermore. More Pottermore. All right, I'm Andrew Sims, I'm Eric Skull, and I'm Mike Attenham.

What is in the news this week?

Well, surprisingly, Pottermore is in the news. A little bit of an update. Their insider blog, which has been pretty busy lately, has talked a little bit about.

They had some downtime last week, and they say now, though, that things are flowing a lot more smoothly.

They had a server upgrade, and now that things are doing a lot better, they're going to turn their attention over to some other improvements, I guess, some enhancements, that they've been meaning to make probably for the last couple of months.

But the big problem was traffic, and they seem to have rectified that problem somewhat.

Well, that's good. So hopefully no more. This site is, or what was that the purple screen of death? Please come back later.

Pottermore is temporarily or temporarily unavailable, something like that.

A new server. I would have thought they would have added like 10 new servers.

They probably did. And you know, that's fine. I'm glad it's running better now, but you know, there's only 600,000 people in it.

And probably fraction of them are actually going into it. So what's going to happen when it opens to the public?

We'll be ready then.

And that's another question is when is it going to open to the public, because we're already into November now, and it seems like beta testing is going to remain open probably through the end of this year.

Yeah. I think that's safe to say. I think that's safe to say.

So I don't, they need, I don't know what they need. They're in, they, they need to add new features. That's what they need.

And what about for people who were waiting until October to get in? And now they're, they don't know when they're going to get in.

Yeah. So basically they extended the beta period for an unknown amount of time. And who knows what's going to happen when it opens up?

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