For those of you who wish to chat with your fellow players outside of the game, Stratics maintains an IRC channel for it’s Lord of the Rings Online portal.

The server info is as follows:

United States – Colorado

stratics.frws.com 6667,6668,7000
irc.gamers-irc.org 6667,6668,7000

United States – Missouri

irc.us.glowfish.de 6667,6668

Europe – France

irc.glowfish.de 6667,6668

Once connected simply type /join #lotro and you are good to go.

If you want to use a web based java client Stratics has you covered as well. Simply go to http://chat.stratics.com/sponsoredchat.html and enter the information required and pick #Lotro from the list of channels.

If you want a stand alone IRC Client there are many both commercial and free for you to choose from, here are some of the better one’s available.
mIRC
Xchat
Chatzilla
Visual IRC