Will try to not make this a novel:
A long time ago (see, nothing like a novel.) "Chat" had a link on sidebar with information/links to IRC. I'm not sure why it was taken out, potentially because they bought in chatboxes and wanted people to use that? Or maybe because logs for cheatery cheaters from that were unusable unless they came from staff? (Anyone know?)
IRC is still used in factions (I'm assuming here...), for people in fed etc who need staff help and for Hamster giveaways. As well as all the other weird little reasons like the small communities who chit-chat/lotto/radio.
I wish it would be brought back into Torn's cityscape as a sidebar link or City link. I guess i wondered if anyone else would want it back? I miss the days when it was super busy in there, for nerdy text-based gamers IRC makes a lot of sense to me, and serves a different functionality to players and building community what chatboxes or forums do...
TL;DR - why is IRC still used for staffy reasons yet not linked/promoted in Torn outside of forums? Does anyone else miss it or think this kind of sucks?
.
Yeah, never understood why it was removed completely, I always forget the link for it too. I'm not sure if it's down to the link removal but it's as dead as a dodo there now (apart from Giveaway periods). My guess is for the average player the in-game chat is sufficient and by having a 'Chat' link on the sidebar it would pull people off the TORN 'game' site and from using the in-game chat. The people who need and benefit from the use of IRC just need the link so it's sort of on a need to know basis, and guess what, princess, you don't need to know.
I do agree though that a simple 'IRC' link could be created in the city just to make it a little easier for the people who use it... or there is a handy little blank spot right at the top of the page next to 'Help', IRC would look pretty there.
Peace
I always imagined it's a precursor to 'official' torn IRC being removed indefinitely. IRC is horrendously 'outdated' in the scheme of things, and it most definitely isn't in any future torn plans.
IRC is a joke anymore. It use to be used by all major factions and was pretty much alive with channels full of players interacting. Now its pretty much a ghost town. Not used for much of anything so why link it in the city? Why even have these giveaways in IRC the better place to have them would be the Global Chat.
The chatboxes have pretty much taken the place of Irc, people who need help are encouraged to use the support feature that Torn has. The link was withdrawn as has been said here, its dated and no longer part of future plans i guess. Its easier in many ways to use torn chatboxes, as if anyone needs help the box will flash whilst you're surfin Torn, rather than checking Irc. At present Irc is still in use, and help is available there. Although there is no link now, if you ask in the chatboxes, someone will usually link you.
Not true, with the amount of people entering it would ridiculously difficult to keep track of the winners. In Irc, people have bots to help them cope.
Just because it would make things more difficult for the ones running the giveaway doesn't mean it wouldn't be the better place to have these giveaways. It certainly would allow for way more participation and a feeling of inclusion to the community as a whole. Having the giveaway's on chat server that isn't even linked in the game is absurd don't you think? Kinda makes it difficult for the common user to participate or is that the goal here?
I play the game primarily on my mobile except 1-2 hours a day. Chat boxes on mobile are way to complicated in current state. Irc is much more effective way of communicating. It is out of date, laggy, and annoying to use but it's not obselete yet.
I wouldn't say that IRC is laggy by any means. The server itself faced no issues with 700+ users connected on Saturday/Sunday and could have handled more quite easily. I would have to agree with Pixie in that IRC a few years ago was really entertaining. These days, it's quiet in comparison but it is still active and has potential to improve again. I personally think that a link should be added somewhere, with some basic instructions on how to view a channels list and join channels. This is the official server for Torn and I think a lot of players could benefit (primarily new players) in joining IRC and meeting new players/joining in the giveaway/games activities. It's a bit of a laugh and I've met the majority of my closest friends on Torn though IRC.
Sever handled shit, you're not fooling anyone, my fri
Peace
IRC was gosh awful. All it did was lag and freeze this past weekend. I couldn't stay in there for the give away. But on the other hand, chat use to be fun and was handy when the link was in the side bar. Now, I have no clue as to get there any more?
Since it's gone a lot of channels have died as well and IRC in general is less active. People say it's because people don't use IRC anymore since 1995, but that's bullshit. When the link was still visible in Torn there were a lot more players and lottos going on.
How's it difficult, anyone in global chat will give you the irc link? If you didn't wish to participate in the irc giveaway there were forum contests and facebook contests. IMO, everybody's tastes were catered for, in one way or another.
Lets not try to derail the discussion we are having here. We were not discussing the other Halloween events either in the forums or on facebook. Were were discussing the relative ease of access of IRC compared to the in game Global chat and the use of these same 2 for the the mentioned giveaway's.
For the first time user it can be very difficult to register and use IRC were as everyone that has a account has easy access to global and can easily enlarge the chat screen making the chat large enough to keep track of. IRC Is and was Laggy as posted by several users that were in the chat room. Were as Torn never has a problem with Lag (lol) But most of all its simply the inclusion of all players. A IRC giveaway limits access because simply put its a pain in the ass to go to IRC. Were as Global is right there much easier, simple, the way we like it :)
All that being said I do appreciate the events no matter were they are. I just feel there is a better way for them to include all players then on a old outdated chat server that isn't even linked in the city anymore. Especially when the games owner has went to all the expense and trouble of including chats in the game servers itself. :)
IRC da bomb!
That wasnt an issue with IRC, that was an issue with the piss poor IRC client that torn uses. Those who connected via an actual client wasn't faced with lag.
@Others:
The way I see it, whilst IRC isnt dead and is still being used by 265 users currently however it is obviously getting less populated. IRC serves a much better purpose than the chats here do. Its virtually impossible to have a chat room of just you and your friends using Torns chatboxes unless you are all part of a faction, there is no way of having a "room" of people that can freely join either.
What Torn could have done was just proxied the chat boxes connection to the IRC server via websockets and had much more functionality with less fuss than the custom chat system they have now. All of their commands would have been built in from day one, people who do not like the UI of the chat boxes (ie how they cant open a chat window in a new window) could have used their own client. It could have used torns authentication easily and have staff integrated into it. You may think it'd have been more hassle to cater for a relatively outdated protocol but that simply isnt the case when IRC servers actually include websocket support out of the box now, all it would need would be a serverside plugin to integrate entirely with torn.
I just don't think the devs like IRC in general, or was set on recreating something from scratch. Torn IRC isnt really controlled by the devs which is probably the main issue here.
I wasnt around to see this IRC sidebar but isnt there a forum thread section just for IRC? What torn should do is make group chats where you can invite people into them like whatsapp basically then irc would be useless
You know, I would be for this if:
A) Rooms could be administered
B) Public rooms could be created
C) API Access to read and write messages via an API key for a bot (with alternate name - but would link to your user account so you cant just troll with this).
Without that, its still not on par with what IRC can do.
Would be terrible, I remember talking to DaveO about the idea of this but really you have your own private one called Faction chat which you can admin.
Global as much as everyone moans about is a pretty nice place and extremely welcoming, it's the reason why global is the most used feature in the entire game. The reason global is so active and IRC is dying is because of the player "admin" who abuse power and generally push their own agenda and while i'm not the biggest fan on staffing they do it decently so that global manages to go on without such issues.
If you were to allow people to make their own chat then it would be great for a few months until those groups die off, I've used global for a long long time. In that time many groups have come into global and left global the only real constant is the change of people who become "regulars" as those who don't actively use global refer to them as. If suddenly you could do these private chats then global dies, if global dies then these private groups die.
I'm not the biggest fan of idiots in global but I rather deal with them and remove the possibility of meeting new people, there are so many in the game I wouldn't know or know me if the chat system worked like that - IRC worked like that mostly because you could search for IRC groups, they'd do giveaways and people actually try harded getting ranks as if they meant something. Global throws that all away but doesn't have the advantages of that.
tl;dr - use faction chat, groups would kill global and killing global would kill this group chat feature.