Starfinder, I don't really have any need for the chat feature either, but good luck with it and hope it brings more interest to the site.
Here's the "big game plan".
Entropia Tracker in its previous version was a "pure tracker" site. Hence the name.
After a few years, the site had got about 15000 users. It was a good community site.
However, the site was also sluggish - load times up to 5-10 seconds per page was not uncommon.
Technically, I wanted to update the programming language of the website from ASP (Visual Basic), to ASPX (C#).
Furthermore the monthly price for the server setup was too expensive compared to the income of the site.
Thus, I bought a server my self, various server programs (database and so on).
The monthly server expenses was then just about cut in half.
At this point in time "BIG industries" came in and said they would like to get more involved with the site - bascially because they use the event system quite a lot, and half of them are soc m8's of mine.
So, speaking with them on skype we brainstormed a lot of ideas for the new site.
And the notion came up "Why not make a site that contains EVERYTHING you need for Entropia Universe?".
As an extension of this idea we thought which "base platform" would suit such a system the best possible way considering the possibilities we wanted on the site. The answer we came up with "Lets try to make a platform that is a cross between Facebook, G+ and Twitter".
Thus we have created a platform that allows for "non traditional entropia tracker" elements to be included on the website.
But then we also thought "Since the site is no longer just a tracker site - what should we call it".
A lot of names was discussed - but since the site would be "your entire Entropia Universe Life", we just decided on "Entropia Life".
Also, keeping in the theme of the site (social network site) as well as us knowing that we can never create everything people want, then we have created two ways of other developers can use our data on their own systems.
This is especially good if you, like some, want "feature X", but do not want to help the community by running the Entropia Tracker Client. Now you can create your own website/"website app" if you want certain functionality. (If you can not code your elf, im sure you can google freelance programmers - then you can provide the feature free of charge to the community)
The reason for us to provide interfaces to the data of the system is that if you use the "app service" you can create an "app" (lik you know from facebook) where the app is embedded on the site. Thus, from day 1 your app has about 18K users...
http://entropialife.com/webservices/appservice.asmx
If you want the data from Entropia Life on your very own website -
www.some-random-site-about-eu.com .. then you can use our API service.
http://entropialife.com/webservices/apiservice.asmx
(Those two services are under HEAVY development atm - and lack A LOT of functionality)
And thats one of the main paths we want to take the site.
We - as in me + BIG industries provide basic functionality (we consider the current array of functions on the site as basic). But, we also offer those two ways of interacting with the system, so other programmers can create their own "extensions/apps" for the site .. or even create their own website using data from Entropia Life.
We see our role as 40% service provide, 60% service developer.
So, now you see the chat on the site. Thats also part of the community feel. I have been sitting there all day, where people have been popping in to say hi, and more than once people have said "Oh, now I know where to go to when I cant play EU" (read:at work.. lol)
Also keeping in line with the idea of "one site for all of Entropia Universe" we are also making a forum module, a wiki system and so on. And instead of the "off the shelf + new skin" systems that are used everywhere else - we create everything from scratch, meaning we can tailor it EXACTLY to our needs.
Take a look at the mob pages now for instance. Now those pages also contains mob description and mob images. Soon there will also be loot tables (what the mob drops). That we can then tie into our "Auction tracker" to see which mobs, based on items dropped/frequency + sellable markup of those items, are the best to hunt today. All to enhance the site, and all of this data will be available through our two services other programmers can use.
Just to give an idea of the "spread" those "site apps" can take, I am currently making a game... yes game.. using the data on the site.. Check it out under "Site apps". Its called "Market Master".
So yes, we want this to be facebook .... for your avatar..