Yeah! You heard me, something is actually coming online.
Master Accounts
Each account can be either a master account (parent is null) or a secondary account (parent is not null). Secondary accounts share all contact information with primary accounts. Secondary accounts are clearly indicated as such. This is similar to what Turbine and NCSoft do, in that you only have to adjust billing information in one place.
Characters
Since the character server is also going up, you will be able to create characters under a master or secondary account. You will be able to specify the character's name and gender. You will be able to obtain a signature block that can be embedded in most popular forum software for an avatar image, and you will be able to obtain a signature block that can be embedded as a signature. The signature version will include online/offline status, and will link to a journal about your character. It is up to you what events are automatically logged to the journal (completion of stories, etc.) and there will be a facility to log short messages to the journal as well (e.g. On vacation until 1/24). People reading your profile will be able to instant message you in game, and chat with you in game, when those servers are finally up.
People on Jabber or Google will eventually be able to subscribe to presence notifications and also send IM in and out of the game. I don't intend to support other chat networks at this time, but that is always subject to change.
Player Associations (Clans)
Master accounts will be able to create Player Associations. These player associations may cross games and servers. They will be able to create "subordinate" organizations, alliances and enemies. There will be a membership roster and a guild events log (similar to the log in EQ2). There will be the capability, as with characters, to add your own messages to the log as well. The messages will be available as an RSS feed, filterable by game, server and unit.
Characters applying for membership in a PA will have their character information added to an RSS feed as well. Someone with add to clan permission will be able to view the feed, and click a link to allow the user to join.
Services
The first round of externally accessible services will also be made available, surrounding these features. As with the clan membership notifications, how this works is the remote site requests access to your character data (note: no personal data is available via this service, only character and clan information is available). You will be allowed to select "allow this site to access my character" or "do not allow this site to access my character" (same with clans). This is so that clans or fan web sites can pull data.
Game Cards
Support for game cards is also going up. Staff accounts will be able to generate game codes for the "alpha test" group, and cards that add as-yet unnamed tokens to accounts. These will be 25 digit alphanumeric codes that do not use the character 1, 0, I or O -- in upper case. Note: generated codes won't work in master accounts for staff, and eventually this feature will probably be restricted to certain staff groups -- but for now, we don't have a mountain of staff so I won't lock it down. :-)
Profile Cards for Web Sites
In addition to all the above, there's also an option to generate profile cards for use on other web sites. This is designed to be larger than a signature or profile box, and will eventually show much more information. For now, it won't do a heck of a lot. Player associations will be able to generate such cards.
Cardspace Login
Log in using a Windows Card Space or other information card provider will be supported.