I like the user verification. Most forums have some kind of verification system to help keep spam down.
The key posts is an interesting feature as well. I think you should give that power to the thread creators as well. That would cause the threads to be self policing and reduce the need for mods. The only drawback of it is it seems a little redundant. In the Heighway Aliens thread, new people will come in asking for details of the game and they can already make it so they can see all of Heighway's posts to read this info but they don't do it. Hopefully this will be a more noticeable function.