House Points & House Cup
House Points
House points are a unit of scoring that students earn for their houses. There are four houses on Potterworld: Griffin, Honeybadger, Raven, and Serpent. These points are counted cumulatively towards the awarded student’s house. Generally, being awarded House points is considered a triumphant feat. This involves a broadcasted message of one’s victory in the Hourglass channel in-game and a message from the House ghost in a house’s respective Discord channel. To view the current amount of House points in-game, use the /hp, /housepoints, or /points commands. This also displays: how many points the leading house is ahead by, the number of points the player has earned in the current quarter, and the total number of points earned by the player overall. To view the current amount of House points on the Potterworld Discord server, use the !hp or !housepoints commands in the #bot-commands channel. These statistics can also be found on the home page of the Potterworld website.
Gaining House Points
On Potterworld, there are several ways to gain House points. Overall, the main methods are through writing excellent classwork, having good class participation, getting top placement in a competition-based class, placing in challenges or tournaments, and completing certain daily activities in /me.
Through the live classes, not quest classes, there are several different opportunities to get House points. If a student writes an exceptional assignment, they can be awarded an O+ grade on the grading scale of, from best to worst with pluses and minuses, O, E, A, P, D, T with A and above is a passing grade. For these O+ assignments, it is up to the hosting Professor’s discretion as to how many House points can be awarded, usually in the range of 0 to 10 House points per student. This means that an O+ assignment is not guaranteed to get House points. If a student demonstrates good participation, whether through getting a question correct or, for example, putting on a detailed performance in Theatre class, they can be awarded up to 8 House points per person. If a student gets top placement in a challenge-based class, they will be awarded based on their placement. Typically, first-place students get 10 House points, second-place students get 8 House points, and third-place students get 5 House points.
For challenges, only winners will receive House points. For team challenges of 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, or 5v5, players in the winning team will be awarded 10 House points each by the hosting Arena Master. For a 1v1 challenge, the winning player will be awarded 20 House points.
For tournaments, only the top three placements will get House points. First place winner(s) will receive 300 House points each, second place winner(s) will receive 100 House points each, and third place will receive 40 House points each.
In the /me menu, the daily activities section offers some daily tasks that a player can complete and redeem to earn House points. Within the main daily activities menu, this includes the Voting task. Within the Minigames submenu, this includes the “A Taste of Glory” task, the “Run For It” task, the "I am the party" task, the "Veni, Vidi, Vici" task, the “Under the Radar” task, the “It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane” task, the "All Rounder" task, the “Ninja Warrior” task, the “Party all day” task, the "Non ducor, duco" task, the “In Plain Sight” task, and the “Defying Gravity” task. Within the Miscellaneous submenu, this includes the “Wayfinder” task and the “School of Witchcraft and Wizardry” task. If a player collects 10 House points earned through daily activities, they can redeem the “House points” task for even more rewards. Take note that House points earned in live classes do not count towards this specific task.
Less frequent ways to get House points can involve completing social media challenges, being consistently helpful towards other students, or reporting a significant bug. There can also be House point contests with events. In these events, students of a house would work collectively together to win a large House point bonus.
House Cup
The House Cup is a trophy award given to the house with the most House points at the end of a specific duration. On Potterworld, it is awarded every three months, or every quarter, in March, June, September, and December. A celebration for that house’s victory then ensues. This celebration involves free collectables for all, usually a note from the current Head of House and an item symbolic to the victorious house. Occasionally, top House point earners of the winning house are recognised as well. After the house cup is awarded to a house, the count restarts anew with a new house cup and rewards awaiting the next winning house. To view the past House Cup Winners in-game, talk to the History Hat in the Trophy Room below the Great Hall.
History
There were additional methods to have a net change in House points, however, all are now outdated. From around 2014 to 2015, when the player base was much smaller than it is today, House points could not only be obtained for good behaviour but could also be deducted due to bad behaviour very occasionally. This feature was removed as players could resort to another house and sabotage it by misbehaving. In 2017, students were able to earn House points from Potions classes. When they were struggling in the old potions system and they did not give up or they successfully made a legendary potion, professors would sometimes reward them with a House point or two for their determination.
Historically, House points were tracked differently. House points used to be tracked in-game within the Great Hall with wool blocks, having 100 House points represented with one block at a time. The number of points to a block continually kept changing as more House points and blocks were added. This ended in September of 2018 due to the constant maintenance. Consequently, another system was introduced to view House points in-game. Professor NPCs stood at the professors' table in Hogsworth’s Great Hall with each being designated to a house and they would constantly display the House point count for that house. Moreover, house cup rewards differed depending on the house a player was in. Around October of 2018, House Ghosts started to announce House point broadcasts in a respective house’s Discord channel. Before then, there was a single, dedicated Discord channel for House points.
House points were much harder to earn back then, with 1,000 House points being a big achievement. Professors were limited to having 10 House points to give out at maximum per class. This would result in only two to three students ever getting House points for an O+ assignment in a class. Some professors would try to balance this by giving O+ students the option of either 30 Academic Credits with no House points or 25 Academic Credits with some House points. This 10-points rule changed in late 2018 to be more lenient. In April of 2020, the maximum amount of House points per O+ assignment was reduced from 20 to 10 to accommodate for changes in the Revelius update. Prior, House points from classes were a dominant factor in contributing to a house’s House points. With how tournaments are today, tournaments make much more of an impact than they did before.
Over time, earning House points became more balanced. In December of 2017, other methods for winning House points were introduced. Besides earning House points from classes, players could now earn them through voting and playing mini-games. Game Tokens, Minigame Tokens —a currency earned from mini-games before the Revelius update in July of 2020, Potion Credits —a currency used to buy potion recipes for professions, Academic Credits, and Voting Tokens could also be traded for House points. These could be traded at the House points Trader NPC at a specific rate of tokens or credits to 5 House points. Additionally, Mugwumps —a staff role that no longer exists today, and Head staff hosted server-wide Hide and Seek games in 2017. Clues to where the hider was would be broadcasted, and the hider could be hidden anywhere throughout the server. With the old version of the Warp Key, players had an easier time than today teleporting to places. The winning seeker would then be awarded House points. Around 2018 was when the professions system was introduced, and this provided another way to earn House points more easily. An influx in House points resulted, causing the system to be rebalanced. With the Revelius update, professions play a smaller role on the server. There is no method to earn House points with professions.
Back then, from around 2014 to early 2018, staff members were not allowed to earn House points in classes. The only exceptions were the instance of staff members being in a group setting, such as in House versus House Trivia class, and if a staff member goes above and beyond in their position by helping in chat. Staff members could be awarded for submitting test questions early during the old test system era and winning Staff (Team) Appreciation Day tournaments and competitions. Since May of 2019, staff members became able to earn House points in classes by participating as students. Furthermore, giving staff members House points outside of class became reserved for more specific circumstances when going above and beyond in their position.
