you don't need any VM at all... Just run Xniff, configure it properly and you'll see anything you need.
In fact, you don't need Xniff either.
Messenger Plus!'s features have for 99,99% nothing to do with the protocol or sending/recieving stuff. Only the colors, and a few other things like /me, /ping and custom sounds use have something todo with sending stuff, all the rest is pure and only Messenger hooking and manipulating of windows.
And the special charactes used and reconized by Plus! for colors and such things is also already well explained in many posts around the forums though...
In fact, if you simply use Messenger's own logging you can see everything you need to see as far as those special formatting characters goes, custom sounds, etc, etc, etc.
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