>Timed log ins via irc/icq

To some extent we may be guilty of this (if your friend is on it makes the possibility of logging in more attractive). But had we exclusively coordinated, or even done it over 60-70% of the time there's no doubt in my mind we would have been banned... high profile as we were.

>, calling
>for help while your character
>is unable to via irc/icq,

I can think of maybe one situation when we did this during some 150 hours of playing time. I can only think of snare... and we pretty much knew when we were in danger of getting snared and would alert each other via group tells to watch for it.

>working around not being able
>to communicate in certain quest
>areas

Since we never went to them, I guess we missed out on this tremendous advantage.

> - basically compensating for
>extenuating circumstances In Character, these
>are things that I think
>we should all agree to
>avoid. And I think
>in general we do.

As for trusting and gauging a groupmate's skill level... I could figure this out in about half a week of grouping with somebody. I remember a specific situation where mat's invoker and my bard killed bemused's paladin and arolin came in saying something like "no wonder he died, you guys know each other through irc." The kill involved a near miss where mat wandered in to zhar trying to kill me west of galadon(no irc or group tells), zhar flees and teleports and I find him (this time a group tell to mat where he is), mat just misses him before he teleports again and we split to look for him. I decide to sit at his recall point for a bit (once again no group tell.) I don't clearly remember what happened next, but I think I fiended him after he recalled and he dies. How irc helped us tactically, i'll never know. The only real advantage from ooc forms of communication is finding that competent groupmate to begin with.