I'll start by apologizing to the players, I didn't intend to upset anybody. There was never any intention to target any specific players, or anything of the sort. I had a miscommunication with the rest of staff about this issue, and that is entirely my fault. I am sorry.

I'm going to ease up on enforcing rule 1.1 in side chat. I'd like to be clear about what the players can expect from myself and the other VH going forward.

Single dots will no longer be punished unless it becomes excessive. Excessive means, at the bare minimum, that a good rule of thumb would be to make sure another dot isn't visible in the expanded chat history. If a single player is posting a dot several times a day, that will also be considered excessive. I'd still encourage players to just send an emoji instead; our GFX artists worked hard on designing them and we all enjoy seeing them used.

I need to acknowledge that I've been using the term "spam" when messaging players about this, and what I meant by that was "flood" or "flooding". I did not initially make a distinction between these terms and found them to mean the same thing, but I think this has caused some additional confusion with the players. To be clear, the issue in side chat is flooding, not spamming.

Spamming, however, is not allowed in the forums, even in private clan forums.* There was recently an issue with this that was addressed by another VH, but if this continues then I will be forced to shut down and delete any offending clans, and issue the appropriate punishments to any offending players. Consider this the final warning about spamming in the forums.

Flooding, will also be punished. In the past, dot trains have fallen under this rule, and they will continue to do so. I want to be as lenient as I can be, but the text of rule 1.1 makes it pretty clear that this type of thing isn't allowed. Encouraging other players to break the rules in an organized fashion is a violation of rule 5.0 and will be met with accordingly more severe punishments.

I know that I may sound like a tyrannical dictator when I say these things, but I hope you can appreciate that really I am trying to help you. Staff have discussed this issue collectively and the above reflects how the entire team will be responding to any situations that arise.

* - I've got a funny personal anecdote related to this topic, message me if you'd like to hear it.

Hello,

I know that some of you may have some trouble with the side chat update. There is a lot that was reworked in the background. This may lead to some issues with your browser caching. To force your browser to refresh without using its cache, press :

Ctrl + F5

This should get your side, gang, and combo chats back up and running.

As well, you will notice a few subtle changes with your side chats. Emoticons were moved to avoid the display moving beyond the screen's height. Spam monitor is no longer an image, but instead some styling.

This was a very intricate update that affects many systems. The objective was to make the transition as invisible and smooth as possible.

Should you find any major bugs, please contact myself, the dev team, VH, or submit a ticket.

- Architect