Web access or IRC client?

Many trivia players start off their online gaming experience using web access to IRC – usually Mibbit – and web access is the only way you can play if you’re at work behind a massive firewall, but eventually you get to hear about IRC clients from other players and then a whole new experience opens up for you.

Some networks provide their own web access – check the webpage for each network for more information – but the two networks where the most active trivia games are played do not (e.g DALnet and EFnet).

PRO

IRC clients – MIRC being the one most new players hear about and start off with – offer a fully configurable playing experience. You can /ignore players, /query players for a private chat and do many, many more things that you cannot do with web access. It is a program that sits on your system, and you don’t have to go through a third party to use it.


CON

The #1 problem with using web portals for playing trivia in IRC is that they interfere with your speed. Lag is generated far more than normal because a third party is involved.

Many people have the mistaken belief that web-based IRC gateways like Mibbit– or even the web access provided by networks - provide anonymity by masking your IP address. They don’t. Your IP will appear in the channel with the web portal name appended to it. Also, when you use a web portal you cannot see the IP of players using an IRC client, but they can see yours! So, there is no security in using the web to gain access to IRC.

Also, some networks ban web portals. At Efnet, for instance, anyone using “webchat.xs4all.nl” is banned because that is one web portal which does, indeed, appear to provide anonymity.

With web portals there is no facility for logging games, and this can be a handicap if you needed to address the network with a complaint about a fellow player.

Nevertheless, there are just as many ‘cons’ with IRC clients. MIRC is free for 3 months, and then you must buy it – although it can be tweaked to last a year, and then it dies on you!

The best free IRC client (for all time, hopefully) is IceChat, allowing you access to many networks at the same time – which MIRC does not – and does not present problems with any trivia interface. However, IceChat has been rumored to be a backdoor for hackers. Beware!

#trivia at EFnet does not support other multi-platform IRC clients such as Pidgin. You can gain access to the channel, but you will be unable to read the questions properly.

Easy Access?

Some IRC networks are very difficult to connect to during peak periods, so your choice of a trivia room may be restricted by this fact alone. Having overcome this problem, you are then faced with other problems of access:


1. are you voiced (+v) on start? #Anime_AM at Rizon; #cyberdate at DALnet; and #action at Rizon have special !voice commands that you need to perform on top of all of the other commands.


2. are you able to chat without a symbol? On #trivia at OperaNet, you need to type ' before any chat while a question is being asked. This makes spontaneous chat virtually impossible (but you do get a long break between question rounds to have a discussion).


3. no need to register? On #trivia at IRCstorm you are encouraged to register your nick for the best experience - and this may be annoying if you regularly change your nick, or just want a quick game of trivia. For regular players, however, it is highly advisable to join a network that does protect you from nukers, hackers and nickstealers. See Masking vs showing IP address


4. is the TrivBot format accessible by all irc clients? On #trivia at EFnet only certain IRC clients can read the format.


5. easily readable hint symbols? Some TrivBots use ---, *** or @@@ for hints. If your eyesight is not very good, the dash symbol can be difficult to read - and gets worse over time. Be warned!


6. is the Trivbot stable? Most Trivbots are regularly offline for a short period for maintenance, and a good OP will let you know when this happens; but some trivia channels have incredibly unstable bots for various reasons (#trivia at EFnet is one of them, see What are TrivMONs? ).


7. is the channel manager and/or OPs accessible? Many IRC trivia channels are run automatically by Bots, without OPs,and although there may be an e-mail address for contacting the manager, he/she never replies.(#trivia at EFnet is one of them).