I've heard a few people having issues lately with IRC working correctly or needing help making clients more sophisticated than javachat to work. With the upcoming chapter story coordination is essential so give one of these a try:
Web Browser based IRC clients ("I don't wanna download anything!")Mibbitwww.mibbit.com
When you go to the mibbit web site, it will look something like this:
Click on the tiny "launch app" (or scroll to the bottom and there will be another similar option.
After a launch screen you will get a screen that looks like this:
Click on the word "server" and type in irc.vastempire.com (you don't need to change anything else)
Right below that put in your desired nick and the channel you would like to join (in most cases this would be vast_empire)
Click join and you're in.
Mibbit does have a way to register which will save some of your information if you'd like to do that go for it.
Chatzilla
If you have Firefox, look into the Chatzilla add on, I'd post pictures of that one but I no longer use firefox and love you guys but I'm not downloading it to take screen shots
Now lets say you've decided to make a commitment and download some software here are a few free ones:
kvirc
Hover over the "running kvIrc" menu and choose "download" follow the prompts to choose the "Official Release" and then pick the one that corresponds to your operating system.
Once the program is installed and you are ready to create a new connection, this ^ box will come up. Click on the globe to create a new connection. Call it Vast Empire or anything you want, once that's done, click on the small box just below the globe to create a new server. Once you have the new server screen open it should look something like this:
Some more:http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-7-free-irc-clients-windows-7/http://download.cnet.com/IceChat-IRC-Client/3000-2150_4-10587438.htmlUseful References: IRC Commands mIRC Tutorial 