And yes, I agree that if we close down the Locals forum, we should also close down the equivalent IRC channels, or rather: Ask people to not use them anymore and put their IC stuff into the game itself, exclusively.
The main #battlemaster channel has been around since 2003 and there have been realm channels for probably just as long. As far as I know there haven't been that many problems coming from it over the years. The active user base is very small(we're talking like 20 players, maybe, with some occasionals thrown in) so I don't see it having much of an effect on anything.
The Chat function hasn't really brought that many new users on IRC so removing it wouldn't really make a difference. Those that want to IRC would still come there.
