Today’s been a great day for Zelda Universe (and subsequently Zelda fans). While we’re all waiting for three (yes, we count Tingle’s games) Zelda titles to be released, it seems the forums have been bustling. Not only have we released a new update for our forum template, the Zelda Temple (now version 2.1), but for the first time ever Zelda Universe has over 2000 active members!

This is the most active the forums have been since Phantom Hourglass’s release back in the good ol’ days of 2007. So we just want to thank everyone for joining in on the Zelda discussion and making ZU an awesome place to be a Zelda fan. 3000 or bust!

Go to the forums now >>

Even more new features and upgrades have come to ZU! Today’s big focus was on the ZU IRC chatroom. For those of you unfamiliar with IRC, it stands for Internet Relay Chat – and it’s how ZUers communicate with each other in real time.

Zelda Universe has long provided easy access to its online chatroom, the largest Zelda chatroom anywhere, through the forums. Today, the software we used to allow that access has been changed entirely. The web-based chatroom is now tons faster thanks to its Mibbit backbone. Now, most recently we had barred guest access while we worked to improve the webchat. Today, because of these software upgrades, that ends. All users – guests AND registered users – can access and participate in Zelda Universe’s chatroom by clicking the “IRC Chatroom” link on the left-hand sidebar. Give it a shot and join us in the chatroom!

“But wait!” as the great Billy Mays would say… “There’s more!”

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Everyone’s abuzz on the Zelda Universe Forums about the new changes that have just been implemented. I’d like to take this opportunity, then, to explain the changes that have been made to the forums – as well as shed some light on the future of some features on the boards. If any of that intrigues you, please read on.

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ZU’s old comments system was getting rusty, so I went on a hunt for a more customizable and interactive comments system. The old one has been completely nuked and replaced by IntenseDebate, a comments system actually owned by the same guys who make Wordpress, the software that powers Zelda Universe. IntenseDebate has a ton more features than that old pile of crap we used to use. Just to highlight a few features:

• OpenID Support (Yeah!)
• Gravatar Support (coming soon to the forums as well, a universal avatar)
• Threaded Comments
• Comment Rating
• Subscribing to Comments

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UPDATE: After seeing how Facebook Connect works for a day, we’re pulling it to look at other options. It’s very wonky and does not work as we expected or wanted – by a wide margin. It is, however, a useful feature, so we’re going to continue looking at it. Don’t be surprised if you see it pop up again.

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I think I can say without bias that the Zelda Universe community stands out as one of the biggest and the most thriving Zelda communities out there. Our forums over the years have been home to many of the most intriguing and groundbreaking pieces of Zelda theorizing and discussion that the internet has to offer, and our member base, though large, has formed strong bonds, some members even deciding to marry each other!

But unfortunately, I also must admit that the main site half of ZU has not quite maintained the high standard that makes our community so famous. This ends now.

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A long time ago, I had big plans to set up OpenID across Zelda Universe, a system that would enable everybody to login to the main site with their forum account without the need to actually physically link the main site to the forums (as we did a long time ago, and this caused huge problems). That was, oh, about three years ago. And OpenID hasn’t come very far. We’ve got OpenID working on our wiki, Zelda Wiki.org, but that’s about it. But something else has come a long way: Facebook Connect, Facebook’s system for logging into other sites with your Facebook account.

Facebook has openly stated that Facebook Connect was a part of OpenID all along, which I assume means that if ZU adopts Facebook Connect early it could eventually mean ZU would be set for a more advanced OpenID setup – but for the meantime, it would mean that you could only login to the main site with a Facebook account, and not your ZU forum account. Currently you cannot login to the main site at all, so it’s a slight improvement over nothing, and ofers a potential way to link your forum account to your main site account so that the two are the same login.

Of course, you do not have to use Facebook Connect even if we install it. If you do not use it, your ZU forum account would remain the same, and if you ever wish to you can link your current forum account to Facebook at any time. If you do link your account to Facebook, certain things you do on ZU, both on the main site and forums, can be posted to your Facebook wall if you want – this both makes ZU a bit more social, and helps spread the word!

If you’re at all interested in this, please vote on the poll below. The poll closes on Saturday, which is when I’ll decide what to do.

A long time has passed since the DSi was released in Japan (while us mortals are still waiting for it) and so far no big-name downloadable content has been offered. But Famitsu has revealed that Sega will release a Phantasy Star game for the console some time this month.

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone! We even got you a card!

“Thanks, ZU, you shouldn’t have!” Well, we did, and it’s totally awesome.

Click for larger version!

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I’m incredibly happy to announce that ZU’s discussion boards have passed the 2,500,000 mark in post count! To give you an idea about how large two and a half million is (million, mind you), I am now going to write a bunch of nonsense that may or may not qualitatively describe 2,500,000:

• If you were to stack 2,500,000 single-dollar bills, one on top of another, you would have a lot of single dollar bills.
• Also, the tower made by those bills would probably be pretty high, but not as high as $800 billion dollars.
• 2,500,000 pencils wouldn’t have enough graphite to write the sheer amount of text on the ZU boards (especially the BA).
• 2,500,000 actually isn’t an accurate post count! If we factor in deleted posts, we have well over 2,600,000 posts.
• Our moderators have each lost at least one finger in deleting those missing 100,000+ posts.
• The terminal item capacity for Link’s incredible invisible item storage medium is 2,500,000 items, and is described by the semicomplex mathematical formula C(i) = ∫ σsin(c(x))dx, where C(i) is the item capacity function, c(x) is the speed of light function, and σ is the Braunstein Conductivity Constant for Virtual Environments.
• If Crab Helmet has anything to say about it, there won’t ever be that many items.
• 2,500,000 rupees probably weighs too much for a wallet. Better get a Hyrule bank account instead!

Well, there’s only one way to go from here, and that’s up. Let’s hit 3,000,000 so we can gloat again in the future, because it’s not often I get to attempt (and probably fail) to be funny! If you’re already registered on the forums, you should join the ongoing discussion about that thing this post was about.