For some people the very idea of something radically new in mIRC seems to turn their stomaches. And that kind of stagnating attitude doesn't help anyone. I bet if it were added 90% of the people against it would stop bitching within 6 months and suddenly claim they were never really against the idea.
I'm not saying it should be added, I'm saying that the only reason that anyone is giving against it can be summed up as "I think audio/video chat is icky" without any actual reasoning behind it.
Agreed.
As far as implementing audio/video support, I would like to see it added if it's useful for many people. Personally I'm in the middle: if it gets added fine, if not also fine. What I do find somewhat weird is that people instantly make the comparision to an IM client if you add a characteristic that IM clients have.
So what if mIRC would have webcam support? For me it'll still be mIRC, richer than before. Don't want to use it? Fine. Think it's a great addition? Even better. There'll have to be a lot more serious and drastic changes to mIRC before it starts looking like an IM client. I don't think it matters much how many IM related features you add to mIRC. Because those features would be implemented in an "mIRC kind of way". mIRC has its own personal touch which is unique for mIRC. Adding webcam support won't make it look more like an IM client. It'll make it look exactly like mIRC was before but with an extra new feature.
I think many people are overlooking the fact that mIRC already comes with a LOT of non-IRC related stuff. As mentioned somewhere in this thread for example the scripting language. There are literally thousands of things that the scripting language allows you to do wich are not nearly related to IRC at all. Yet you don't hear anyone complaining to limit the scripting language. In fact, looking at feature suggestions, people always want more and more features for the scripting language. How popular is the "syntax highlighter" editor request? What does that have to do with IRC? Yet many, many many people would like to see that added.
mIRC stopped being "just an IRC client" years ago, so why use the "just an IRC client" as a counter argument for future features?
Come to think of it, we all know that many new mIRC users use mIRC strictly for file sharing. Heck, many old users still do it, and it is somewhat of a plague. Looking at it, adding webcam support for example could be an incentive for new people to start using mIRC... but this time not for file sharing, but for communicating with each other, which is all in all mIRC's prime raison d'être.
Anyway, wherever it goes in the future...we'll just have to wait and see. Not saying people's opinions are wrong, or right, though in the end what a bunch of people on this forum think probably doesn't have that great deal of an influence, considering only a minuscule of mIRC's entire user base are represented here.
