We closed the shoutbox because it was contributing to site-breaking lag issues. To help ensure that everyone is able to enjoy Survival with as few problems as possible, it's temporarily been shut down. It should be restored after the holiday is over and the servers aren't under so much strain. :)

I'm not sure you're understanding the severity of the problem we have with the shoutbox. It literally is breaking the site during events. The horrible lag that you're not currently experiencing but usually do? That's due in large part to the shoutbox. If we open it up right now, the site goes down, and then nobody gets to enjoy the holiday at all. We are very much working on the site to make it run smoothly, but just due to the way that the shoutbox works and its whole system, it's a massive drag on the servers. The programmers are trying to see if there is a good way to fix that, but in the meantime, I think everyone can take a minor hiatus from the SB in the name of having a functional site.

( You're not supposed to ask for kisses in the SB, anyway. ;) )

As for having the SB and the forum down at the same time, that was an unexpected thing with the forums and hopefully should not happen again. Unfortunately, even with the forums down, bringing the SB back would've killed the site.

I cannot stress this enough: the programmers are working very hard. Site events are extremely busy for our small staff. Everyone is doing the best that they can and we are all super appreciative of your patience and understanding. :)

Thank you for understanding! I know it's tough because you guys can't see what's going on behind the scenes, but trust me when I say that if we're aware of an issue then we are absolutely working hard to try and get it fixed. :)

We are exploring our options and doing our best to make sure that all needs will be met. :)

That is a good suggestion :) but unfortunately there are several concerns that make an official Discord not feasible in the long term. For instance, we can't enforce the block system, and we can't know who any given Discord user is on Subeta. If someone breaks the rules in the server, but refuses to tell us their Subeta account, we'd have no way to enforce our usual warnings system with them, which is unfair to everyone else. There are ways around this, but nothing feasible for us right now given our resources and other priorities.

I do know that some Shoutbox users have made their own Discord server, and there are other Subeta themed Discord servers made and run by users, that you can find links for here and there in the forums. So there are still options for that kind of thing, just nothing official, sorry "^^