You all seem to be talking like IMs and IRC are competing against each other. They're separate entities which have some overlap in function. IRC is primarily based around channels, allowing you to either feel more like part of an online community within a channel or otherwise find people who are interested in a similar topic as yourself (ie. mostly strangers). IMs on the other hand are primarily based on making online communication with people you've already met and just want to speak to in a one-to-one conversation. IMs are better at that than IRC and so, with the increasing access of the internet it makes sense that people who's only intention is to talk to their friends will use an IM and not IRC.
Because IMs and IRC have different functions there's absolutely no reason why one would 'die' just because the other is becoming more successful, and I can see no evidence of that being the case. Even if it was, it still wouldn't be a reason in itself to add a feature to mIRC.
Nobody here is trying to market IRC or "beat IMs", it's simply a case of whatever's best at a given task will usually come out on top. Yes, I do think audio and video DCCs should be supported in mIRC, but Instant Messenging's success and any perceived decline in IRC have nothing to do with my reasoning and, IMO, are completely irrelevant to the feature suggestion. So why not talk about the feature itself and stop with the "IRC vs IM" stuff. It's pointless.
