Sure, a dedicated Writer's Nexus (I think this was also suggested at GoMa as "Community Nexus") would be the best solution, allowing us to (a) write clean, maintainable code
and (b) do the modifications we need to do, keep it expendable, and so on - removing most of the fan-age stuff from Cyan's Nexus. Someone (GPNMilano aka Chloe) even had plans for such a project, and I agreed to do the Python scripting with her. However, she unfortunately has vanished (again
), the project never really started. And I alone have neither time nor knowledge to create such a Nexus (I supposed it'd be easier now that 3ds Max is out, but it's still a large project).
Regarding the hood issue: I suppose I could extend the server to support creating and deleting hoods, though the instancing system would need some re-work. However, I don't even know if the client supports that properly, and the Relto Shelf does not have the necessary buttons required to change your hood. And then I never considered a real disadvantage - I never saw an Alcugs Shard having more than 30 players online at the same time, and then it was always handy to have a global list of online players in your Neighbors section.