omg pleaseee. i was just about to write a post of my own regarding this. it would be so useful to have an ongoing shopping basket/cart where you can progressively add items; it's a little frustrating being constantly refreshed to the top right after you buy something! 

I won’t repeat the point about invisibility cloaks not equating to status replacements (at least on EU), since Drew did that well already. 

But wanted to add that, while I get where you’re coming from with this and why you want it to be easier to obtain for users who haven’t won the competition, it’s important to remember that Animagus abilities in canon are still exceptionally rare, and opening them up for something of a “free-for-all” in this sense – regardless of the difficulty of the achievements needed (though some could well be spammed to reach and not everyone may follow rules) – may undermine that level of IG difficulty and rarity. Having only a few Animagus users on a site because of the competitions is realistic to canon, and the site leaders are evidently aware that it’s one of the more common of the rare statuses as they’ve posted it as one of the statuses to win in more than one competition. The rarity of it is not only part of what keeps it special for the winners, but what keeps it true to the specialness with which it’s treated in canon, too. It’s rare. And simply because a group of four boys managed it doesn’t mean all can – in fact, IG, the process can be extraordinarily dangerous for those who don’t execute it properly, and I suspect it would be unrealistic for many to go for the opportunity and have clear paths of success.  

Further, the nature of a status competition allows for close consideration by the backstory leader and other involved site leaders in order to ensure that the user who is winning will execute the status in a realistic way, based on the way they’ve already written it. That can’t be proven with open accessibility and could provide a host of problems for the management – backstory leaders in particular – as they try to keep order and ensure every Animagus is keeping their content realistic and true to canon. A status competition tends to have the bonus of ensuring that realism from the start, and those who go for the opportunity are often also those who know that it’ll be realistic to their characters as well. It lightens the workload on what could be a very troublesome department to monitor. 

bump!