Kim Salzer , who served as director of marketing at EA from 2000 to 2003, revealed that the company was at one time working on a Harry Potter MMO.
Then the publisher owned the rights to create games for the famous universe. It was a really promising project and a lot of effort went into its development. According to Salzer, they already had a beta that combined the online and offline gaming experience – the latter was implemented through real mail in the form of prizes, ribbons and other pleasant things from Hogwarts.
Apparently, the developers were confident in the success of the project, but it was canceled anyway. At that time, “EA was undergoing certain changes, and the publisher simply did not believe that the new IP would show long-term success.”