The IRC, or Internet Relay Chat is a great system that gets people together to chat about their common interests. You can find discussion groups for just about anything, and Acclaim has a channel for the 9Dragons game. You can find me there just about any day of the week, and when I'm not actually at my desk playing you can still leave me a message there. A few other regulars in this league are often there, and so are a few higher level players from Bardo.

To use the IRC you first need chat client software. The most common software is mIRC, but it's not free. There is a short evaluation period, and then you are asked to pay. You can still use the software if you don't pay, but it will remind you once in a while that you haven't paid to use it. Once you down load the software you'll need to select which server system you want to connect to, and the Acclaim 9Dragons channel is on the gamesurge network. Once you are connected to that network just type in /join #9dragons, and you're in.

I prefer to use the Chatzilla add-on for the FireFox browser and it's just about as simple to use. Chatzilla is free to use too. Once you've installed Chatzilla and have it running you simply type /attach irc.gamesurge.net, and once you're connected, type /join #9dragons. It's that easy.

There is a more detailed guide to the IRC from Acclaim right here. I hope that helps, and I hope to see you there once in a while.

- SpearDriver