Fight or Kite: Harry Potter Magic Awakened was the most full-featured MMO you never played

By
Sam Kash
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The sudden and unexpected announcement that Harry Potter: Magic Awakened is being shuttered and taken offline everywhere save the original Chinese servers came as a huge blow to the game’s community, understandably. Not only were we not expecting a sunset, but there were no obvious signs for players that the game was even struggling. Leading up to the announcement, HPMA had just received a handful of updates to the seasonal story as well as some different quests and achievements. One of the events even established a player from each House to be the Prefect.

While I hadn’t written on the game in depth in quite some time, I’ve actually continued to play daily ever since the game released. And I do mean daily. I haven’t missed a day logging in, although I did miss a few daily achievements here and there. So many updates and features have been added to the game that even as someone who’s played consistently over the past year, I haven’t completed or advanced through all of them.

I want to really share with the MOP community the wide array of different activities that are in the game and how a lot of them function. In my past pieces, I talked about some of the game’s tentpole features like dueling, forest explorations, dancing, and even the game’s housing. Some of them I’ll touch on again briefly as they’ve evolved since I last looked at them, but largely I want to show you how many features that players beg for in other games that are, or were, available in HPMA.

First I want to talk about some of the activities that I believe are truly catered to the roleplaying community. I say “believe” because I’m not an RPer myself, but I’ve seen other players doing it, and I can appreciate they’re having fun in their own way. Of course, we’re in the Wizarding World as students at Hogwarts, so players don’t have the ability to play as an adult, but within that framing you can game in a lot of different ways.

The player housing is a first and obvious one. I previously explained the fluidity of the system and how to make the most of the housing features. But within a player’s house, you can invite others to join, chat, and general hang out. Every chair and stool can be sat on too – not always an option in MMORPGs.

While the game didn’t have a character information page for writing up your own backstory like City of Heroes or Champions Online, it did have a cool page where you could design info to display. You could place different stickers, photos you’ve taken, achievements you’re proud of, and so forth. Each of the pieces above could be moved around and set where the player liked, too.

During some seasonal content, like Halloween or Christmas, you were able to add a cupcake decoration station to your room that players could come and interact with and build their own cupcakes to share with each other. I think going to others’ rooms was required to collect all the different frosting colors and styles.

Players could also unlock Picnic mats that could be placed around the game’s world. Players who were walking by or were invited could join the picnic and sit and hang out with each other. I didn’t do any picnics, but supposedly you weren’t really in your own instance either; you were just out in the world. There weren’t any achievements or big rewards for it (hence why I didn’t participate), but it was just a cool feature for players who were interested in that sort of RP content.

Speaking of decorating the cupcakes: In a similar fashion, players were able to design their own hat in game during one of the seasonal events. You completed some achievements to unlock the different features of the hat, and you just placed things freely around it. Check out my hat below! It’s my hat, and no one else has one like it because I designed it myself. I mean, I know you can submit designs for gear in Trove and some other games, but how many MMOs really let you build your own unique gear?!

While designing the hat was a one-off event, there are so many different styles you could enjoy in the game. Admittedly, most of them were paid for or even lockboxes, but achieving a unique look was attainable even as a poor, basic boy like me just through gameplay. Players could at any time pop open the wardrobe and change their look, too – from hairstyle and color to eye shape and makeup, even lipstick, earrings, and all sorts of accessories. HPMA included style templates for players too, so if you found a certain look you liked, or a few of them, you could save them and switch instantly your whole look.

While emotes are standard for MMOs, not all of them are interactive or cooperative as they are in HPMA. If you want to hug another player, then you can initiate the emote, and the other player will receive a popup indicating as much, and if they accept, you’ll hug each other.

I also felt like dancing was a nice feature that RPers would enjoy. Even though it was formatted an active tapping game and it did provide rewards for participating, the zone would restrict player movement to only walking. It was a little annoying as you moved slower, but it was thematic. There’s no running in a ballroom!

Now, for combatants like myself, there were a slew of different PvP modes. Just over the summer, NetEase added casual matches with all kinds of different modes. Originally, we had only individual duels and partner duels where we competed with one other friend. In the casual matches, the studio added one silly fight with random candy buffs that would drop around the arena, a six person free-for-all, a snowball battle, and even a battle royale-style mode. And that’s not even all of them!

This past spring, HPMA added a mode called Verdant Victories where players could use special plants they grew themselves in combat, like chomping cabbages! There’s a whole additional feature I nearly forgot: Gardening was added at the same time. Players are able to add some gardening plots to their room and cultivate and grow their own plants. Some of them are combat-related for the Verdant Victories mentioned there, but others are ornamental. You can use specific display cases to display your flowers or sell them to the shop for some gold or gems.

The gardening feature even had a full trait tree. While the feature itself was primarily a system to encourage you to log in regularly as each plant had its own needs and different timers were running simultaneously, you could level up different abilities to eventually make the gardening less a headache and just another part of your daily routine.
Supposedly there were other types of skills like gardening planned, but alas, we’ll never see them over here.

There’s still so many other activities I didn’t get to talk about, like the Book with No Name, where you got to replay events from the original books/films as Harry and the other characters. There’s just so much to do that it is so sad it’s time is already coming to an end. It offered more unique and special features than most MMORPGs, never mind mobile MMOs, and now we’re losing it for good.

It’s a shame NetEase has already pulled the game from the app stores, but if you’re in the game and looking to hang out a little before it all sunsets forever, just look me up. I’m samkash.

Every other week, Massively OP’s Sam Kash delivers Fight or Kite, our trip through the state of PvP across the MMORPG industry. Whether he’s sitting in a queue or rolling with the zerg, Sam’s all about the adrenaline rush of a good battle. Because when you boil it down, the whole reason we PvP (other than to pwn noobs) is to have fun fighting a new and unpredictable enemy!
The Harry Potter franchise is considered a controversial brand owing to the transphobic rhetoric of its creator, which has prompted backlash and boycotts against video games set in the HP universe.
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