I remember the Hellmonkeys part aswell.
I used to scroll the forums, but I never got to registering back then.
Then I stoped d2, and when i started playing again, the first thing I did was register here, heh.

I think integreting IRC into the forums (there is a hack on vb.org which can do this) would be a good idea.
I never bother to run mIRC, go into a chatroom, etc... That takes up to much time.
However, if it would be on the board itself, I would visit it.