some old timers used irrc chat as well, but it was never massively accepted because of connection issues. call me weird, but i liked using chatango for battles, as we could mute spam in battle chat in game and people were still able to banter and go wild on chatango. the downside was that you needed to have a really fast copy/paster with a steady connection to post the orders in game on time. these days, when i can go online to a battle, i don't even open the chat but have someone whisper me critical orders, otherwise i would have to put on ignore about 3/4 of the players online that find funny to post their own orders, youtube links or just spam too much.