Can someone please tell me how to use the crazy changing letters/numbers because I've seen other posts that say how to use it but it doesn't work for me. Help please.
This page on the wiki may help http://empireminecraft.com/wiki/formatted-signs/ *NOTE* These formatting do not work in chat, only signs, books, and res messages
I doubt that it was coded 100% by one of the developers, seeing how there are dozens of plugins that do this out there that you can download.
As others have said, only staff can use formatting in chat. This is just to prevent players from making official looking announcements and the like. There was a similar issue with residence messages which prompted Aikar to add the prefix.