Honestly, its starting to grow on me.
Two things need to be changed:
Get rid of that stupid fucking flashing global bar thing. Yes we know this is a casino, you don't have to act so much like one.
Change the colors. They are horribly bland, drab and hard to see. I don't care if you keep them, as long as you give us more options.
If those two things are fixed I think it will make a great chat system. I would also like an easier way to get PMs to an individual into their own tab.
What I've done is separate as much as i can.
Main tab has only Local, Trade and PM set to display.
System tab has only Global and System set to display.
New tab 1 is Soc tab, only Soc/Soc Snr set to display.
New tab 2 is PM tab, only PM set to display.
Optional Tab 1 is Team tab, I open this whenever i start up a team, only Team is displayed.
Optional Tab N, when I get involved in PM talk, I will go over to friends tab and send a message from there. This then allows me to have that individual in a separate tab when i minimize the message window.
All in all, this new chat system is very powerful and allows for much more room to grow as the game changes. The old chat system, while great in its simplicity had no where to grow.