After discussion with Galemp, I am considering making the 162 forum public.
The reason is that we want the general forum populace to understand the significance of Phoenix while the "mystery of 162" is still somewhat fresh in their minds. After all, the trailer was released back at the beginning of October. If we wait until the Big RevealTM of the Grand PrizeTM it will be yet another few months, and interest may unceremoniously die off.
So the proposal is to make the 162 forum public now. Let the general public play along with the last thread if they want to. However, in order to keep things fair for the people who have been playing Phoenix this entire time, we will release the Grand Prize via PM to all the members who were able to discover Phoenix when it was still private. (I've run a database query to determine all the members who have posted in this forum up until now.)
We will release the Grand Prize to the public one month after we release it to you via PM. This fits with our original plan where Phoenix was supposed to conclude on December 1, followed by the ST:R release on December 25.
Opinions, thoughts, protests?