<font size="4"><span style="font-weight: bold;">IRC How-To<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><font size="2">What the hell is IRC?</font></span></span><font size="2"><br />IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is a form of real-time communication across dozens of networks, containing thousands of chat channels, and millions of users. You can find channels for nearly any topic of interest, though certain IRC networks specialize in certain things.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why the hell do we want IRC?<br /></span>To shoot the shit, of course! You can join our channel as another means to talk to our members, or just always stay connected to it so you can witness peoples' foolishness after the fact. There might also be a wdfnews bot that, using special commands in the channel, can provide a level of interaction with the game servers you can't get from the forums.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Okay, Okay. What do I have to do to join in this epic experience?<br /></span>First you'll need to download an IRC client, assuming you do not have one already. You can sometimes find IRC client support in messengers such as Trillian. If you don't have one handy and are on Windows, the most common one will probably be mIRC. It can be downloaded at <a href="http://www.mirc.com/">http://www.mirc.com/</a>. The software is freeware so no $$$ needed. Note, however, that when you open the program you'll have a splash screen which takes some time to present a continue button. This is the author's way of annoying you with his picture for a long period of time, to the point you pay. But the continue button will eventually come up!<br /><br />Once you have your client installed you'll want to connect to a server on the GameSurge network. In mIRC, that means clicking on &quot;File&quot; then on &quot;Select Server...&quot;. You should see GameSurge as an option in the servers window. Just select the &quot;Random server&quot; and &quot;OK&quot;. Once the window closes, hit the little lightning bolt in the upper-left and it will try to connect you. Assuming it works you should see a window open and spam a bunch of stuff about the server and network. Once that's finished, just type in &quot;/join #wdfnews&quot; in the text entry area at the bottom of the window.<br /><br />Ta-da! You should be in our channel then. It might seem like a lot of work to get to at first but the clients often offer ways to reconnect to your favorite channels at the click of a button. If you prefer the manual approach, feel free to consider yourself l33t. At the very least you shouldn't have to select the server every time.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Beyond #wdfnews</span><br />More than hosting our channel, IRC could well offer many other channels to pique your interest. Want to talk about a game? It probably has a channel. Need help with a computer language? It probably has multiple channels. IRC is a great repository of help and conversation. If you spend any amount of time on a computer it'll probably benefit you to learn your way around it!<br /><br /><br />Thanks to Rikaelus for typing that up... twice.</font></font>

Big thanks to Rik and Hooli who keep me company in the channel all the time. They know the definition of support. Everyone else can suck my balls.

Also, Rik and Hooli are the only two invited to my pants party.

Do you have one in mind?

I'm running Seamonkey on my Linux machine and it as an IRC window.  What's the address or server name again?  I'm a n00b at this.  And no, I'm not getting mIRC 'cause I'm running off of a Live CD.

I'll be adding some game trivia and some WDFNews/pDs trivia in the coming weeks. If you have some good trivia on those topics please PM them to me.

I'll fix it.

Added: currency, stargate sg-1, dark angel, smallville, star trek, 80's movies, 80's pop culture, chemistry, history, geography... some other crap as well.


Also, ciao time needs to get me his steamid for winning.

/me slaps wdfnews channel with a large trout

I remember the old school channel!