Sup. I was talking to G0f0rbr0ke the other day about a method of instating some kind of chat function into the site itself so players can more freely speak to one another. It would make it much easier to set up matches between one another and to better start up conversations about this or that. Sure, we do have match making threads, but you can’t guarantee that someone will be on the moment you post to have a match set up.
Essentially this’ll just make it so you can better speak to one another about random topics, or set up some kind of easy match making games without wasting time or waiting forever for an opponent.
I am planning to open a Chat Server. Either Team Speak for SRK or Ventrilo. Yes, I know it’s a voice communication. I might use it for chat and voice. So, please speak up if you wish to see this come for SRK.
An iframe with Mibbit shouldn’t use any additional server resources. It’s hosted on the Mibbit server. That being said, I’d rather have something Ajax that would be more server intensive. No worries if it was vetoed.
So people do like the idea of it at least. And GFB, If you did that, what would be the point? It’s just telling people to ‘Download X, Type in Y, and talk to Z’ just like the mIRC Chats are now. Something actually IN the site would be Far more useful
See the problem with having a “chat” tab that brings up a client like what I have at 8WR is that now you have to support it. You have to explain to users how to use it; and if they are new to IRC, then it becomes a hassle for the website owners. Saying just go to “mibbit.com” is easier, and it removes the onus of support from SRK. At that point its the responsibility of the user to figure out how to use IRC on their own.
As for the arguments of the mIRC Chats being full, Only specific ones are. And again, you’re telling people to have downloaded and payed for (Or done something illegal to) The mIRC Program or gone somewhere off site. Which isn’t the point of this thread.
And Jaxel, in response to that, you could always have a tab or link that has en explanatory page. That should take care of most problems then. You’ll still get durps or bugs, but hey, that’s what happens on the internet.
IRC is not mIRC. There are plenty of free / open-source IRC apps (XChat, HydraIRC, ChatZilla and more), and Mibbit is a very capable web-based client. I realize something on-site is probably more convenient but the point Jaxel is trying to make is that as soon as SRK integrates it in any way it becomes “official” and needs to be supported. IRC is not rocket science but it’s still something else that becomes an additional burden.
And I’m sure some people won’t agree, but having some barrier to entry *can *be a good thing …
