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This article was written by my good friend Zhao Ji. I am republishing it in Austria because I think it is an incredibly useful guide.



So you live in Austria and got a mess load of messages and links telling you all kinds of things about where to go, who to talk to, and what phase of the month to sacrifice your goat, but you still have questions and don't want to wait around for slow and boring in game PMs? Well no problem. The answer? IRC.

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. It was developed a long time ago by people more clever than myself, and probably you, too. It's a means of synchronous conferencing between multiple clients over a network that uses a dedicated communications layer. It's a chat room. Although dated by a couple decades, nobody has got around to developing a suitable replacement, even if various attempts have been made with varying degrees of success.

And you're thinking, "That's Great! I'll use that!" Yes, my young apprentice, you will. The easiest method is right here:

Austria IRC

Just click that link, and off you go. No need to worry, it will plug you directly into our channel. All you have to plug in a name and click connect. Now, you're thinking "Golly, Uncle Zhao, is it really that easy? What about that box telling my to authenticate?" Don't worry, I'm getting to that part, ye barnacle.



Authentication is a means of identity protection on an IRC server. You don't have to do it, but if you do you'll get the opportunity to shake hands with Mickey Mouse and it will keep bilge rats from plundering your nickname and pretending to be you. You don't want that. So if ye want to be an old salt like Cap'n Zhao, you'll register. It's an easy process, but like registering for anything else, you'll have to provide some kind of email.

Once you've connected, and once you feel like joining the veteran scallywags, type "/ns register {insert password here} {email goes here}" Without the quotes and without the brackets. Easy, right? You'd think, but just in case, practice writing it out of a sheet of paper or something first. Once that's out of the way, you'll get an email with some instructions and a confirmation code. Read what it says and do that. Now you're identified. Still with me? Good. You'll get yer sea legs in no time.

Now, you're online and you're identified. Good. By now you've probably asked your questions and gotten to know some of the crew. So you exit IRC. Soon, you'll have more questions, or maybe you'll just miss one or two of us. It's time to go back. Remember that password you gave? This time around, when it asks for authentication, you type that in there, and change the dropdown box to say "Identify to Nickserv". It will automatically identify you upon connecting.

So it's been a few days. You're tired and hungry and haven't seen your family in a while because you've been on IRC the whole time, but now it's getting old. #Austria is just a little too boring. Aren't there any other chat rooms? Of course! You just need to know their names. Once you do, you can just type "/j #{channelname}" Again, without the quotes or the brackets. The number symbol stays. That's there for a reason so don't mess with it. On IRC, every room is prefixed with one of those. Don't ask me why, but don't forget it.

Okay, word of mouth is good, but don't they have an index of all the rooms? Aye, matey. Type "/list" (without the quotes, remember?) to see a list of all the rooms. You can join any of them, and by Poseidon's beard is there a lot of them. To thin out the numbers, you can type "/list -max {number} -min {number}" Where {number} is a number of your choice. This will eliminate rooms with more than {number} and less than {number}. You can also search for rooms by certain words or letters: "/list *{word or letter}*" Those asterisks are there for a reason. By now you should be seeing a pattern form. If it's there, leave it be.

Thats all folks! Sorry for the wall of text.