I actually thought about going back to the beginning of the most recent boards and just giving a bunch of +1's to old posts to see if there's a specific post count needed for an account to trigger PM status. I don't want to 'earn' it in bad faith though, that's just not good mojo.

I also thought of having some sort of contact directory, but that may also be considered an abuse of information (plus open yourself up for crazy Russian spam) since I think a lot of the game communicates on AIM anyways. Since I started playing, I have a total of two people from the game on contact outside of the game. (However, one of them I actually know in person so that shouldn't even count) Having someone to talk to about the game has given me TONS of help. Not in a "Hey, where can I go look for my sleeks?!" but more like, "Ohhhhhhh crap, where am I?! *copy and paste room while panicking*" :D