Nobody will? 95% or more of users can use mIRC 7 and won't even notice a difference regarding unicode because most either already use it (mIRC's supported it for years) or else they don't need it.
No matter what mIRC does, you'll always have people using "outdated" software. Check the client stats for any major network and large channel and you'll find many using mIRC versions all the way back to the 5.x versions. People need to choose to either move forward or to remain in the past and nothing anyone can do or say will change their minds. mIRC should not be forced to remain in the past just because a small percentage of users want it to.
I was mostly referring to specific groups. If you have a group of say 8 people, and they all try mIRC 7 one at a time, discover that they can't see their friends, and then move back to mIRC 6.35, they will all remain stuck on 6.35 for all eternity.
Instead of waiting (waiting on what exactly?), you might want to check with your friends if all of you can manage to enter the unicode version of the channel. If so, don't keep falling back to mIRC 6.35, but make the move.
