Hello, Akuyi!
Welcome to Windlyn!
Looks like galled answered your inquiry on the lag.
I'm glad you like the avatars. There's quite a few items out, and more to come! You may have missed the halloween event, but you've arrived at the perfect time before the next event. I'd suggest saving up your feathers.
Right now, posting is the easiest way to earn feathers. Some forums give out more feathers than others, but for a majority of non-spam forums you get enough to buy one item for every 1-2 posts. As you get to know the community and keep posting, I'm sure you'll find it too easy. haha. But do get to know them! We have a very friendly community here who absolutely adore meeting new people.
Other than that, you can play one of the games in the arcade, but you currently only earn feathers for beating the high scores. I'm working on building some windlyn-exclusive games
and revamping the arcade to give feathers based on your score, rather than beating the high score.
I hope that answers your questions! If you have any more, please feel free to PM a moderator (a user with a blue username) or me, or post in the help/support forum.