There should be either a time stamp or game year associated with each private message.

Also, I'm not sure that the private chat is working. I've sent several and have yet to receive a response. Of course, people could just be ignoring me but at least one of them I know to respond even if in the negative, so I get the impression the the messages are either not going through or they are not triggering a notification that they have been sent.

EDIT: I just received a private message from some one whom I have not sent a message to myself. I believe this means the private chat system is working and I am just being ignored. C'est la vie :\

Agreed.
We will be adding some additional chat info (game year / time) and clearer text separation soon.

What about sending a message to more than one person (i.e. group messages)? For team games, even FFAs, that is important.

In team games, there is automatically a group chat with just your team members.

In Free-For-Alls, it will still be one to one chat. This is to keep it simple and will also add a little more room for changing allegiances (Am I getting the full picture? Are my temporary alliances teaming up against me?).

Please refresh your browser to see the new chat formatting with game year display.

I've just started a new game and it looks good. There is no longer the need to scroll down as everything is contained within the dimentions of my screen.

how about sending group messages to some players but not others in non-team games.
seems like it is no longer possible...

In a no NAP game it would be nice if there was only the "everyone" option and not the private message option - presumably this would be a checkbox on game creation.

Even if not a no NAP game it might be interesting to only have the "EVERYONE" option to make things interesting. I second the motion to create a checkbox that would allow for selecting "Full Comms Allowed", "Public Comms Only", and perhaps even a "No Comms" option.