Personally, I'm not really a fan in most cases because they can be difficult to moderate, and significantly bring down forum activity in most cases. They can be very nice to have in some cases as well, however.
What is your opinion?
I like forum chats, they make communication much easier and fun - although it really does drag down forum posts as I noticed, but it does build up better friendships between forum members.
Forums and chat rooms never seem to go to together well. You see how many people we have on the IcyBoards IRC
4 on a good day.
Well on one hand I do like chat rooms. However when the chat room starts to get more activity than the forum, that's where my support for them ends.