November Breed Spotlight

First up, apologies that this was pushed back a week...I realized on Wednesday that it was supposed to be up last Sunday, so decided to just wait for the next Sunday as opposed to it happening mid-week....because that's what happens when you're in the process of moving LOL.

This month, we're putting a spotlight on Thestrals, Hippogriffs, Hippocampus, and Kelpies! From now until next Tuesday December 2nd, you can find these four breeds in the Store, before they return to their regular home in the Cash Shop for another year!

Thestrals - Thestrals were added to HP in 2010. They are a breed of elusive carnivorous winged horse from Harry Potter, only visible to those who have seen death. The current highest pointed is Baubillious, owned by The Fellowship #50850!

Hippogriffs - Hippogriffs were added to HP in 2010 alongside their Harry Potter counterpart, the Thestral. Originally from Greek mythology, they have the top half of an eagle and the bottom half of a horse. The current highest pointed is Solaris, owned by The Fellowship #38248!

Hippocampus - Hippocampi were added to HP in 2010. A Hippocampus is a sea horse from classic mythology. It has the upper body of a horse and the lower body of a fish. The current highest pointed is Rainbow Reef, owned by Yamasawki #46911!

Kelpies - Kelpies were added to HP in 2010. According to Scottish and Irish folklore, they are a horselike creature with the ability to take human form. The current highest pointed is Astraeus, owned by Jaya #2021!

Wondering when your favourite Cash Shop breeds will be in the spotlight? Check out our game Calendar, or on our Other Info's Mythical and Wild Animals tabs!

Hosting Your Graphics on Imgur

For those of you not located in the UK, back on September 30th, 2025, Imgur stopped being accessible for anyone living in the UK due to their Online Safety Act and how Imgur's parent company MediaLab handles children's data. For more information, you can read about it in this BBC news article. You can also read about the discussion that happened here on the HP forums around this here.

The majority of players on HP have uploaded their graphics to Imgur over the years as their chosen host to be able to use them on animals and layouts on HP, so obviously the fact that no image hosted by Imgur will now show up for any of our UK players is a bit of an issue.

Unlike when Tinypic used to reuse urls so suddenly a horse picture would turn into porn, we the HP staff recognize that we can't ban the use of Imgur outright, because for the majority of us on here, it is still a functioning image hosting website and that wouldn't be fair. However on the flipside, we also understand how sad/frustrating/etc it must be for our UK users to come onto HP and miss out on seeing everyone's beautiful graphics because they're all hosted on Imgur, and that too isn't fair to them.

In an effort to be as inclusive as we can to our UK friends, we the HP staff would like to request that going forward, that everyone find a new hosting site for their HP graphics that isn't Imgur, so that everyone is able to enjoy the art of HP.

These were other hosting sites recommended by HP Players:

- Postimages - can choose how long the image is hosted for

- Imgbox

I (blitz) would also like to offer a free service for mass-changing urls of players' default breed graphics from ones hosted on Imgur, to ones hosted on other sites that our UK friends can still see.

How it would work:

1) You upload your default graphic to another hosting site.

2) You message me listing the previous (Imgur) url and the one you want it changed to. Note: Make sure the new URL you provide to me ends in .png, .jpg etc otherwise it won't work! Preferred format for the message sent to me would be something like: ImgurURL to NEWURL

3) I will use my back end magic to change every horse or dog that has that specific Imgur URL as their image to the one that is hosted on another site.

This is something that is only available from me for mass-changing of URLs that are used on multiple horses or dogs, however, not for individual images for 1 horse or dog, nor for layouts or stylesheets. 

Why am I doing this? Because I recognize that if you have a lot of animals like I do, the idea of having to change every animal's image individually would make you cry from how daunting a task it would be, especially if your breeds are like mine and each one has the same image used on all of them. The one thing to note though, is that I will not be able to start processing these until after my big move next weekend, because obviously my move takes precedence lol.

If any of the above doesn't make sense, please feel free to shoot me a message and I will do my best to answer any questions!

Happy Playing,

-Blitz

FAQ (preemptively lol):

Blitz! Is this change to something not Imgur mandatory?

While it's not mandatory, I invite you to put the shoe on the other foot and imagine HP without being able to see most of the graphics/images other than those hosted by HP's server. It would be a barren boring place, would it not? :P