Yes, I am asking for feedback here. I run a forum with over 1.5 million posts and I have been under the impression that chats are cancer for a forum. Reasons include...

1. they eat the forums: your forums will not grow to their full potential when a user can simply open a chat. They have lesser reason to create a thread and start a potential community conversation about a topic

2. do messages get deleted in this chat (pruned)? We used to run a chat when our website first opened, but after traffic picked up over the first year, we literally had to get rid of it for performance reasons. However, when we had a "Shoutbox", it would get pruned on a daily basis, therefore all of that discussion was now literally deleted, hence "eating the forums".

On the plus side, I love the simplicity of this forum software and the layout. I love how every forum category has it's own distinguished/highlighted areas showing the total views, replies and followers.

But yes, why should I consider installing this? For the record, I have no intention of installing this chat software based on my current questions. Prove me wrong and present a valid argument, please.

do messages get deleted in this chat (pruned)?

Yes you can set it that way!

they eat the forums: your forums will not grow to their full potential when a user can simply open a chat.

Yes users do this if they see a public chat(chat rooms), but Private(one-one) messaging is very useful if you want users to have a quick one-one interaction instead of the slow PM and it may also help avoid a lot of offtopic threads.

Prove me wrong and present a valid argument

Theorotically, all your points are valid and I too agree with them.
But practically speaking(this chat was launched back in 2010), users welcome a chat software or for that matter any new technology that makes interaction even a tiny bit easier.

But again, what works for others may not work for you, what you can do is just experiment and find out