For continuity you could check out
The Lounge,
Quassel,
WeeChat or one of the various bouncers,
for example
ZNC.
There are also public logs:
http://infobot.rikers.org/%23wowuidev/
There's plenty of pastebin sites around, of course.
Which beneficial features beyond scrollback and rudimentary text formatting were you thinking of?
Voice chat? Emojis? Being hosted by a startup with unknown investors? :P