thx cheese it was just too many clients logged in from the same ip. As long as any lan machine has sysop level everyones messages are fine. All players can log in and see public chat. Also everyone logging in from outside my ip is also good to go. Perhaps i'll find another solution later on if i can modify the message flooding. I used the bot option with the ip of my server. Now everyone can log in and see chat.
Axe Demento's post in Some Player's "pubchat" text can't be read by others was marked as the answer