Looking for Advice, New Venture

Hey Warriors and Warriorettes, I could use your input right about now.

I've run very successful businesses in the MMO niche, particularly World of Warcraft, and I'm starting something new for Blizzard Entertainment's next big franchise continuation (Diablo 3).

I know, I know. Making money in the MMO niche is kind of a cake walk, but still I've made over $100,000 per year consistently for almost three years now. Not bragging, just trying to give you an idea as to the kind of money I'm willing to throw into these ventures.

Now, Diablo 3 isn't coming out for a while, but hopefully in the next 3 months. I've been blogging hoping for a release for ... oh... almost a YEAR now with delay after delay causing me to wait to produce a guide to the game (that's what I do, I create expert level guides and sell them). I've invested THOUSANDS into the websites to add lots of custom artwork and other fancy smancy stuff.

So all this time has enabled me to think long and hard about what I'm going to sell to my growing audience (almost up to 700 subscribers before the game is even out!). Finally, I came to the conclusion to develop a membership forum. The forum is perfect because it lets people start buying from me now even though the game isn't even out yet. Players will be able to discuss strategy and come up with secret methods based on information coming out, without making it public to the rest of the community.

In case you're wondering why anyone would buy a guide to this game, it's going to feature an in game auction house where players can trade virtually items for real world currency to each other. Basically, the forum will be a speculation guide to making money in the video game before it's even released.

Now, here's my question. I made the forum look like a work site, you know, solid blue/white with the microsoft silver theme. The reason being that I wanted it to look like a work site for those people browsing at work. Since this is for a gaming site, odds are everyone will view it at work on their lunch break or off and on during the day.

Is this a mistake? Should I make the forum blatantly "gaming esque" with gothic themes and a dark background? Will people be turned off by this?

Have you worked with paid membership forums in the past? Is it worth it to go low price and have lots of members or restrict membership with a higher price? In case you were wondering, I'm going with $2 per month. Doesn't sound like much, but I'm aiming for 1000-2000 members.