First off, threads that are close/similar to this one. (I searched shout, please include others if you find em) http://empireminecraft.com/threads/forum-chat.33144/#post-636439 The IRC channel is not used that often. I am suggesting that we have a shoutbox, similar to this. It would bring the community closer together, offering plenty of chances to make new friends, and be more of an appeal rather than the IRC channel. I am pretty sure nearly all the forum users would be using it, in my opinion. Of course with this implemented, there would have to be a way to report somebody and have some rules on it about advertising threads. But I think this would be greatly beneficial.
I think IRC is perfect - few professional, successful websites really have chat boxes, yet it allows people to chat on the site if they wish to. EMC is still primarily a gaming server, so I say we should keep most of the chat in-game.
theres really no reason for a chat plugin, you have the game for that, or the forums, or your own status, or mumble. all of these can be accessed from a mobile phone. waste of bandwidth to have another chat for a game you can chat in
I know of an option that would be a better fit for EMC, it is an ability that up there where it says *Chat*, it would bring you to window, where it just auto sign ins to our IRC channel, creating a forum based chat software, at the same time utilizing something we already have, that the staff members are already present in.
