1) It would mean a very slow contact list for sure.
2) It wouldn't work if people are offline, blocked, etc...
3) Patchou would need to create his own sending and recieving protocol or needs to mess with the msn messenger protocol because there is nothing which can be used to send data from and towards a contact.
4) Patchou will not tamper with the protocol
5) not all custom icons are suitable for displaying in the contact list (regarding sizes)
6) no, not everybody likes it...
- custom sounds work because there is a conversation window open and the contact is online and thus information can be send to and from the contact without tampering with the protocol or using an alternative P2P method.
- It isn't critical if the custom sounds system lags a bit or take 1 second to connect to the server. However, it is extremely critical when displaying hundreds of custom emoticons in your contactlist, unless you're happy with waiting 5 minutes until everything is updated each time.
Unless MS implements this themselfs custom emoticons in names are not practical and doable at all in any way or solution you can think of...
(yep, this has been asked before, many times. In other words: for the futur, try to search for previously posted threads and post in them instead of creating yet another thread to avoid that we need to yet again repeat everything which has been said in those previous threads)
) or last but not least, a plug in 
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/ 
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had an id of 243. and it was a custom one. user A has the Simily in there MSN Messenger custom smiies, User B doesnt. User A puts the smiliy of the id 243 into his name by putting something like (!#243). Once User's B Messenger client notices the name change, Messenger Plus of user B connects to user's A Messenger Plus, it askes for smililey id 243. then sends it to user B.
