when the original chatroom is so good and works so well why are you changing it for a far less user freindly system?
Well, I think there is the core of a good idea here, fixing the more glaring bugs in the current chatroom (swapping the 5 min lockout for a more sensible 'killghost' for example) would be quite simple and would help to smooth over the cracks while the ever more delayed beta is worked on.
