Part Four - Email Lists
For those who do not know, there are a number of email lists players can join. You do this from the realmsnet site. You reach this by clicking the 'Mailing Lists' link on the left side of the main page.
The first option is 'Sign Up'. This provides the various email lists available. Note that you will need to be logged in with your account to join any of these. The three biggest of these are the announce, icrealms and oocrealms lists. The first announces upcoming events, the second is for players who wish to interact or make announcemenets of an IC nature and the third is for OOC announcements, such as for lost items.
To the left of each Mailing List, there is the Membership category. This is a pull down list. The first pulldown defaults to 'Unsubscribed' which means you will receive nothing from this list. By clicking on the pulldown it will show what email addresses you have available "(as dictated by your account info). Simply choose which email you wish to get emails to. The second pulldown defaults to 'Normal Emails'; this means that when an email is sent to this list you will get it right away. There are other options here which allow you to receive the emails in a bundle by day, week or month and as text, hmtl or mime. These other options are great if you don't want a lot of emails hitting your inbox.
There are a number of different email lists available. Check them out and see which ones interest you.
The second link under 'Mailing Lists' is 'RealmsNet Archives'. This is really cool. I know for me personally, I tend to read an email and then delete it. However, there are times when I think about an earlier email and wish I could remember what it said (like the time I went to a practice and no one was there and I checked the oocrealms archive and saw the practices were cancelled over winter break - after I made the 5 hour drive). On this page you can see a list of the available email lists. To the right of each is the Archive column that shows a Month and Year. By clicking on the pulldown button you can change the Month and Year. Hit the 'View Archive' button and you'll see a list of all the emails that were sent to that email list for that month.
The Archives are an excellent way to see the Realms from the past. Both the oocrealms and icrealms archives let us see past struggles (the ooc list has a slew of arguments/questions) and stories (the ic list is full of character interactions that showcase the various plots from the past). If you've ever been curious about the Realms past this is one way to see it.