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New Telegram System

by Max Barry
Fri, 01 Feb 2013

I can't even remember when we first began planning to overhaul the Telegram system. It was years ago. In the meantime, people have often asked, "How is the new TG system coming along?" and "When are we getting that new TG system?" and "My God, what do you people do all day?"

The thing is, the new Telegram system turned out to be kind of enormous. As in, hundreds of hours of work.

But it's finally here! Or rather, it's about to be! I'm posting a few days ahead of implementation so you know what to expect.

The aim of the overhaul is to make the core system better for everyone, to solve some difficulties we've had with regional recruitment messages, and to make available at a premium some extra features that we otherwise wouldn't be able to support.

In a few days, everyone will get:

  • A stylish new not-so-2002ish look
  • A "Sent Items" folder that holds a copy of every TG you ever send from now on
  • A way to reply to a telegram that doesn't involve navigating to the sender's nation page, scrolling to the bottom, and trying to remember what you were talking about
  • An "In reply to" link and a Conversation View, so when you get a telegram that just says, "I totally agree," you can see what the hell they mean
  • An "Archive" folder with a capacity of 20 TGs, so your total capacity including the Inbox just doubled to a total of 40 TGs
  • Icons that identify TGs based on type (regional recruitment, WA campaign, message from regional Delegate, etc)
  • The ability to opt-out of TGs based on their type, including fine-grained control for blocking "all", "most", or "some" of each type
  • A Telegrams page that doesn't automatically mark every TG as read but rather only the ones you actually, you know, read
  • A way to delete a TG that's faster than clicking a little box, scrolling, clicking a button, and waiting for the page to reload
  • The ability to address a single TG to up to 8 nations

If you purchase a Postmaster account in the NS Store (US$4.99), you'll also get:

  • A "Deleted Items" folder that holds your deleted TGs for 24 hours 100 deleted TGs, in case you delete something but then are like oh crap no wait
  • The ability to create 3 extra folders and name them whatever you like, like "WA business" or "Regional Plots" or "Forbidden Love"
  • Folder storage capacity of 100 TGs (up from 20), meaning that altogether your Inbox, Archive, and three custom folders can hold 500 TGs
  • Removal of site ads
  • "Site supporter" trophy for your nation page
If you purchase a Postmaster-General account in the NS Store (US$9.99), you'll get:
  • Everything mentioned above
  • No limit on TG storage; your TGs will never be automatically deleted
  • The ability to create as many custom folders as you like
  • A "Deleted Items" folder that holds TGs for 14 days
  • 500 Telegram Stamps (see below)

If you purchase Telegram Stamps in the NS Store, you'll get:

  • The ability to address a TG to a region or special group (e.g. "WA Delegates") and have that TG delivered to everyone in the region or group
  • Delivery Reports showing who received your Mass TG and who blocked it
  • The ability to use the %NATION% token in your message, which automatically expands out to the name of the recipient
  • The ability to queue TGs for future delivery to nations that don't exist yet, by addressing them to a special group like "New Nations" or "Refounded Nations"
  • (Recruitment TGs:) A button appended to your message that allows the recipient nation to move to your region in one click
  • (Recruitment TGs:) Recruitment Reports showing who moved to your region after viewing your TG

If you are a World Assembly Delegate or Founder, you'll get:

  • The ability to send TGs to your own region for free, i.e. with no Telegram Stamps

So that's why it took a while. I hope you'll enjoy the new TG system! Because if you don't, I really wasted a lot of time.

Questions? Find answers here!

Update (7-Feb-13): Modified how "Deleted Items" folder will work, based on discovery that feature did not work as intended and could not easily be made to.