Our forums have improved tremendously since the beginning last March; however, there still remains a problem. With 62 English sub-forums the conversations are well-organized, yet many remain undiscovered until hours or days after they are posted.

If you were to create a thread about Items, I want to know about it as it happens- even though I'm currently browsing the General Discussion area. That would require me constantly refreshing each individual sub-forum that interests me. Since that's annoying, I probably won't see your post until tomorrow or whenever I happen to check the Items sub-forum.

What results is a conversation that slowly, or never, takes place- which might have otherwise occured, had I only known about your post. This ineffieciency results in less feedback for SquareEnix and under-usage of the forums. What we need is a "Current Forum Activity" tab occupying the empty space on the right border that refreshes every 10 seconds showing the most recent posts as they occur. Also, a filter/checklist would be good so that we see posts of only the desired sub-forums.

Example:

"Current Forum Activity" tab updated every 10 seconds with most recent posts (not to be confused with "Hot Topics" on Forum Top)

Working example from another site here