It might be worth nothing that DALnet suffered greatly from attacks (
explained here) last year. It went from a network with around 120,000 users to around 40-50,000 users. DALnet then went on to
ban file sharing (illegal, legal, whatever - all of it), so now it averages around 30-35,000 users. Therefore, what used to be popular may not be so popular anymore. Don't be surprised at this.
SearchIRC and
netsplit.de are good resources to try and find out if they've relocated, or if a separate group of poeple have setup something similar somewhere else.
Hope you find whatcha lookin' for
Regards,
