Hi, and welcome. The short answer is that to keep the community safe and creeper-free, we have extremely strict rules about access to anything that could lead to off-site contact, such as PMs and chat. Regular members are members that have access to everything except PM and chat. After you've been here 2 weeks or longer, and posted 50 posts or more, you can apply for full membership, which grants access to chat and PMs. Right now, full member review is taking 3-4 weeks, though we are aiming to get that time down to a week or two. It's also worth noting that the chat room right now is used very little, mostly because it is Flash-based and almost everyone accesses EC on their phones... and almost nobody's phone supports Flash. This will change when we shift to our new platform, which is planned for sometime in the next couple of months. More info is here.
