Organizing that way would work depending on how many characters you play and how large those games are. I have several characters that are in games with 70+ characters. That means each list for them would have 70+ friends. My buddy lists would be HUGE and unwieldy. I think Pidgin can be awesome for people who don't like to add EVERYONE or who don't play in large games.
When I downloaded it, the spellcheck program somehow stayed around. Now EVERY program I use somehow miraculously has spellcheck (or maybe it was a vista or opera update? IDK). If it WAS the Aspell program, it's pretty amazing and I love it.