Future communication tools for PA.

[BloodyButcher]

The discussion has allready been spinning across HC channels for perhaps the last 15 rounds.
The mix of only IRC and ingame tools just aint sufficient anymore.
The merlin tools, and mPulse hosting has been supplying alliances with sufficient tools and free hosting, but now this seems to not be keeping alliances on IRC anymore.
Perhaps ironical enough the added feature to view fleets ingame has speeded up the drastic migration away from IRC.
Now people might not consider this as a dramatical change to the PA community, but it actualy is.
Back in the days, prior to the move to netgamers it was pretty common, if not a must, for big alliances to have private servers for IRC, due to distrust in the IRC ops, and stability.
Still using IRC for communication, even if on a private network, wasnt much a issue, as the community would still be connected with each other on the official network.
When 1up came along they did something pretty shocking and unsual, at the time, and said netgamers and simple tools is sufficient enough to run a top alliance.
Now we are facing a opposite trend, alliances, mostly built around experince players are moving totaly away from irc, and this is just gonna spread as we go.
This means the community is splitting up, and leaves us with a dilemma wether to embrace it or try get features wich makes this less attractive for alliances