This is basically how my chat looks (in Opera. Current picture from Chrome is below).
The reason for this is partially known. My ISP blocks certain things on the web due to the fact that I live in a block with over 400 people. Because the traffic is high, some stuff is being blocked. This includes torrent, rapidshare-like, adult sites etc. What's more, if you try to google words like "torrent", "proxy", "sexy", that also gets blocked.
Somehow, this also affects chat. Why do I know it? Well, it was holidays and because there aren't many people during that time, the Internet is totally unlocked and TSO chat works fine. Today though the ISP decided to put restrictions and, as expected, the chat doesn't work anymore.
My ISP and TSO Support were not able to locate the source of the problem. Although that was about 3 months ago when I talked with them.
If more people see this, maybe someone will know the fix?
My guess is that it has something to do with packets sent to the chat server from my computer or to my computer from the chat server. There must be a certain code or word in those packets that makes my ISP block it. If anyone knows anything about that kind of stuff, maybe they can tell if that is the case. Then I would give some tips to my ISP about what it is exactly.
EDIT: I can add that on test servers, the trade system works for me.
EDIT2: I also noticed that the friendlist doesn't work. It doesn't update player level or their Online status.
EDIT3: I started using Chrome (apart frmo Opera that I am using all the time) and this problem exists there too. Same goes for Internet Explorer.
However, I had a small problem with the Flash plugin crashing sometimes and it turns out that I had 3 of those runnign at the same time and that's wher the conflict was. I switched off two of them, as suggested on some site, and now chat looks different:
I once had this on Opera (and I mean once, until I restarted Opera) but in Chrome it persists even after I restarted twice to check. Maybe that will give some clues.