Every house can talk on three channels: the whole world, its realm, and its state. Messages arrive live on your house page and last until the age ends.
Channels
| Channel | Who reads it |
|---|---|
| World | Every house |
| Realm | The houses in your realm |
| State | The houses in your state |
Limits
- Length: 1 to 1,000 characters. Spaces at either end are trimmed.
- Speed: a burst of 5 messages, then one every 2 seconds. Faster messages are refused (
429); wait a moment and send again. - Moderators: a moderator can remove a message, or mute a player for a while. A muted player's messages are refused (
403, "a moderator has kept you out of chat for now"). - Separate from orders: chat has its own limit, so talking never slows your orders down, and orders never use up your chat.
How much is kept
- Each channel keeps its newest 1,000 messages. When a new one arrives on a full channel, the oldest is dropped.
- Opening chat shows the last 200; tools can page through the rest with
?after={id}(see API for Tools). - Chat lasts one age. When the next age starts, every channel starts empty.
Why the limits
Every message is sent at once to everyone on its channel, so one fast sender on world chat would reach every house many times a second. The cap per channel also keeps the server's storage small: even full channels of the longest messages come to about 150 MB for a whole world.