Some tidbits to help flesh out the videos I've posted to date.
We're setting up Social Groups for individuals to join on the new site, by doing this you can visit that group, and group live chat with individuals in that group (if you want) and view just that groups forums. For example if you only play on Baja, you can join our Baja Server Group, from inside that group you'll be able to view Baja's Discussion Forum, and Baja's EM Forum, an Event Calendar only for that group which Members of that community will be able to post to, a group members listing, and a group chat option. For other titles this will work similarly. There will also be a RSS Feed tab which will show you information from the Shard's EM Website (provided they have a working RSS, RSS 2.0 or Atom Feed) and there will be an activity stream which will update to show when new items are added to any of these except the live chat.
What you won't see is stuff relevant to only Atlantic or Chesapeake or UO in General, or other Games they have their own Community Groups. You can quickly navigate between groups by using the drop down on your Navigation Bar under your User Name at the top of the screen and using it to bring up a page showing all the groups you belong to, or if you prefer the current way of navigating just forums we're going to have that available as well where you can see all the available forums as well as the archives of closed forums which are being gathered together. An example of this is the UO Shard Trade forums. They are all being combined into the Traders Hall where you'll be able to tag and filter posts by Shard. The older content from prior to the new site launch will be archived and view-able in these situations. Of course nothing prevents individuals from setting up and establishing their own Shard Trade Groups using our Community Group feature.
Some of the cool and possibly controversial new features and policies. **Please be aware these are subject to change**
We're putting in a site currency, called trinkets. The majority of users won't need to use them often so they won't be impacted by this because there will be ways to gain it either passively, through content contributions, and optionally people will be able to purchase trinkets via paypal for special uses. Why? Stratics is huge, huge means lots of server storage, and the means a large hosting fee. The typical user will earn enough trinkets through normal site use to cover their needs. Power users of the site who want to attach a lot of images to posts may need to purchase a small amount from time to time to keep their habit going (currently we're looking at 1 trinket per image upload, and you can purchase a minimum of 50 for $1 that's $0.02 an image folks!). Trinkets will not be able to be traded between accounts and you won't be able to preform any trinket usage activity that will drop your balance below 0.
Special Ways to Earn Trinkets are going to be in place. We're going to have an easy way for the community to submit articles (which can be on any MMORPG or MOBA), or guides for our supported titles and they will earn Trinkets for doing so. These articles will have to be meet specific criteria on length, and will be exempt from the normal Trinket cost for images. An editor will review your submitted content and either Publish the Article, Reject it an inform you as to why, or contact you with suggested edits, if there is a large amount of them or make minor corrections such as spelling before approval. You'll get the credit for the Content which is published regardless. As it is currently set up you would need to submit around 10 articles or guides and have them approved and published to earn enough Trinkets to create a Community Group of your own.
Now there are some special uses for Trinkets. If you wanted your own Community Group for say your guild which would come with a group chat, a single forum (no-sub forums), Event Calendar, RSS feed reader, and group activity stream you can purchase one with for 500 Trinkets ($10 if you wish to purchase them) as a one time cost. For a daily user of the site who doesn't want to buy trinkets, and only gain them through passive means you should be able to gain enough to start a group in about 4-5 months provide you aren't spending them on other things. These groups can be made public where anyone can join, visible but people would have to be invited or apply to join and view their content, or hidden completely from the rest of the community which makes them invite only. They'll still fall under our Rules of Conduct, but the group owner will be expected to moderate these groups himself. A select few of us as staff will have access to preform spot checks to make sure no major violations are occurring. If we find violations we'll work with you to get it cleaned up and back to standard, but if a group repeatedly fails to maintain our Rules of Conduct it can be removed. The burden of moderating won't be solely on the Group Owner, he will be able to make certain individuals of his choosing Group Moderators or Group Admins who can assist him in maintaining that group.
There will also be ways to lose trinkets. Posts that have to be moderated and removed will cost the user a trinket, after all you get one a day for making a post, comments on articles and guides that have to be moderated can lose you a trinket etc for the same reason. While there is a limit on how many you can gain a day passively there is no limit on how many you could lose, so if you go into a negative balance you have two options 1.) Behave until you go back positive or 2.) Purchase enough to offset your balance back to a positive amount. This encourages appropriate behavior and limits and discourages individuals from engaging in anti-social behavior by depriving them of some functions on the site. While some people may object to people being able to pay their way back to a positive balance, please think of it as a means of making reparations by helping support the site.
We're getting rid of temporary bans. We've noticed over time our point system has a major flaw, individuals will game it and stay just outside of ban range and/or take a small short term ban then behave just long enough they can act up again and not risk a long term or permanent ban. Instead we're going to moderate as normal, but instead of you receiving points, we're keeping a log on users, attached to their account and only view-able/editable by forum admins and the site owner. This means all moderation will be reviewed by these individuals automatically and if an individual's record shows a consistent anti-social penchant over a long length of time, they will be recommended for banning to the site owner. All account bans are going to be permanent. We're focusing on this being a more community oriented site, and want to provide a healthy environment for that community to grow.
