[Be|gar]

Chat actually encourages a community feel as you can see discussions that are happening while you're macroing, hunting, etc. It especially helps when oldies come back and can immediately see all of their old friends and let people know that they, themselves, are here. Not only that but when new people join it shows them that there are many active players to interact with. It seems like the "hubs" like brit bank are getting rather sparse. I know personally when i would play other shards years ago, i'd go to brit bank first to see how much activity i could expect on a shard.

if you don't like what you're seeing, disable it, simple as that.