What decides which Archipelago you start in?

It's picked by the game when you start playing on that map.

So yeah basically the older your haven the more dead your chat becomes as players leave the game over time.

It also means you can't recruit newer players in main chat unless you have a newer haven.

Not sure how you got that. AFAIK, the number of Archipelagos does not change, so the game likely assigns the new accounts in an alternating fasnhio (or some similar way).

I think your Archipelago is determined by your Map position when you create an account

I tried moving my Haven, but it did not help

Alt accounts created later may have different chat radius

If Keel D. Haul  wants to use chat for recruitment,  try asking BH officers which area they are in, so you can all post the same message to different Archipelagos

p.s.  I did see a very old News item saying that only ONE global chat would be used,  but it never got done

I also thought that it depended on the original location, because that would kinda make sense.

However, a long time ago (before Whirlpools!), I realised that a friend, just a few miles away from me, belongs to a differen archipelago. My ID on the map is even and his is odd.

Not a proof, of course, but indicative.

If it is picked by the starting date and constantly generating new ones then it means as time goes on and people quit then that archipelago chat dies off as fewer accounts have access to it.  We don't actully know how it works.

imo it stifles the game in areas of new player development, brotherhood recruitment, inter BH relations, and becomes an unused game feature as time progresses.

New players will not get as much access to veteran advice as they will not be in the same archipelago.

Older established accounts do not have the ability to recruit from the new member pool in game chat.

Aside from going down the ranking list and parroting individuals in a BH there is no way to really find common grounds or interests.  There is little to promote interbrotherhood relations and main chat is one of the few tools given that makes this possible.

After a decade or more there is very few havens left that can utilize it leading to it becoming a dead feature of the game.  There is no reason to go there if nobody posts in it.  If nobody goes there then nobody can post in it.

It would be nice to see this area of the game redone to become a more useful tool for both veteran and new players.  If it is a load balancing thing maybe we could have multiple rooms with occupancy limits that we tab in or out of according to the limits.  Not sure exactly what the solution is but the current system imo is more Busted than me Knuckles.  

@Keel D. Haul, it doesn't happen often, but I agree with you on this one. I am also quite sure that they won't redo it.

I am all but certain that these "archipelagos" are ingrained deeply in the game, just mostly invisible to the players. It would be a major overhaul and I don't see them doing it simply for the sake of the chat in a game that seems to be slowly declining for years now. 😔

" I don't see them doing it simply for the sake of the chat in a game that seems to be slowly declining for years now. "

Social interaction is a major part of MMO success.  If it wasn't broken maybe it wouldn't be declining.  Be it friendly or instigative the chat is where it is at.  It encourages people to log back in and catchup with friends or respond to snarky enemy comments with some of your own.  It can start wars over trivial things like someone's favorite ice cream flavor.  I'm sure that would be profitable for the ruby hawkers.

This has always been a part of the game that is lacking.  There is no area for veteran players to interact with potential new recruits to bring fresh blood into the fold.   BH's have their own individual chats but there is no way for allied BH's to share a massive private chatroom for group plans without 3rd party software.  There is no real interaction aside from the parrots and BH chats.  Why hang out in a social game if there is little or no social interaction?

If they really want people to get absorbed into the game they need to make it so people can better interact outside of thier own BH's.  Without this the game can plateau and stagnate pretty quickly.

@Keel D. Haul, even if I agreed with you, that ship has sailed (pun intended).

Also, I don't agree. An in-game chat will never be as versatile or as powerful as Discord or a similar client. However, there are other, fairly simple things that Plarium could've - and should've - done:

1. Maintaining an official P:ToF (or a more general Plarium) Discord channel would've helped what you want. But it's too late now. The interest, it seems, is already lost.

1.1. Then you add simple frequent games for small amounts of rubies for those who participate there, in order to keep the interest, and the server grows.

2. Public links to reports, so you can copy it as a URL that opens in a browser and shows your report (with any visibility limitations that you impose), easy to share in clients like Discord.

3. Direct support for BH Discords/Skypes/etc. in BH profiles.

Probably a few more things.

All together would be much simpler to do than a proper chat, yet they'd have a serious impact.

But, like I said, all too late for that now, and is there still no interest from Plarium to do it. 🤷