I have several objections to all the ideas presented in this post. For one thing, the difficult implementation of the new skill tree and of the whole blog thing. Second of all, a max level characther can take down a forum of the same level with no problems, therefore making pvp sort of useless. What I think would be better is to keep it simple: Each user can make his own forum (in a way similar to forumbuildr, but with a few templates for the logos – not everyone in here is proficient in photoshop) and as for the whole system, both players should start pwning the others forums and the fastest pwner wins. This would make the whole thing much more balanced imo.

EDIT: Also, the forum would be the same level as the user.