Does this link help ?
https://pidgin.im/help/protocols/irc/
We use Quakenet
You can create an account like this https://www.quakenet.org/help/q/how-to-register-an-account-with-q
quakenet url is irc.quakenet.org port is 6667
The channel is #0ad for chat #0ad-dev for dev chat.
Maybe, does it support rss feeds ?