34 ms·

Speaking as an 18 y.o. doing my first year college online, I wouldn't have made it through quarantine without Discord. I've a server with my high school friends

by fish45 5y ago

Speaking as an 18 y.o. doing my first year college online, I wouldn't have made it through quarantine without Discord. I've a server with my high school friends and since Discord lowers the barrier to join a voice call so much it's super chill to just hop in a channel when doing homework or playing a game or whatever else, and anyone else who's free can join. I really wish there were competition, but there's nothing AFAIK that can replicate this particular experience except for Teamspeak, which has other problems.

lrvick 5y ago
Why not matrix?
- y2bd 5y ago
  AFAIK there are no Matrix clients with voice channels.
- pyr0hu 5y ago
  Discord is free, no need for maintenance and much easier to onboard non-tech friends IMO.
  - kevincox 5y ago
    There are also many free Matrix severs. But I agree that Discord has much more UX polish right now. (Especially around onboarding).
- rakoo 5y ago
  Matrix the protocol is not there yet. Element, its main client, lacks too many features to have the same experience: - No concept of servers (in discord parlance). Its equivalent (matrix spaces, in https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/msc1772/proposals/1772-groups-as-rooms.md https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/msc177...) is in progress - No included audio/video calls. You have to link them manually and use a third-party stack, such as Jitsi - Even if you have Jitsi the experience is not the same. Discord's experience is like a chat room, except with audio and video. In Element it's more like a standard call
  - lbotos 5y ago
    > - No included audio/video calls. You have to link them manually and use a third-party stack, such as Jitsi To be explicit, no group audio/video. I run my own Matrix server for my partner and I and it uses webRTC based audio out of the box for 1:1 calls which we use every day, and sometimes video. No Jitsi enabled in my config. (I only share this so other readers can gauge if Matrix can meet their needs.)
    - kevincox 5y ago
      It is also worth noting that the WebRTC calls are E2E encrypted and look fantastic as they are often peer-to-peer so you can get an amazing connection if you have the bandwidth available.
      - pkulak 5y ago
        I'm blown away by the audio and video quality of my Matrix calls. I always thought it was because, as I run my own server, there's no bandwidth limit, but I hadn't considered the whole peer-to-peer thing.
    - miketery 5y ago
      What client do you use on your devices to talk via the server?
      - lbotos 5y ago
        For now element, but I hope to add the functionality to Ditto and switch to that.
    - boojums 5y ago
      Mind sharing the Synapse configuration changes you made to enable the audio/video calls over peer-to-peer?
      - lbotos 5y ago
- echelon 5y ago
  My username and favorite aliases were taken. Discord allows anyone to share the same username. It appends a nearly invisible hash to disambiguate, and you can even change it. Discord does usernames right.
  - toolz 5y ago
    hmm, so on public discord servers if someone copies my nickname and pretends to be me, someone might not easily notice? Seems like a pretty readily used vulnerability. I remember back in high school on AIM someone made a username very similar to mine and said some nasty things to a girl I was talking to - she told me to stop talking to her and I didn't figure out why until years later. I imagine the same exploit could be done more easily if you can use the same username and discord actively tries to hide the hash. Maybe I'm just overly sensitive since impersonation has hurt me, though.
    - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
      Depends on the setup of the Discord server. Many servers have different "roles" created, though often they're just nothing more than a title and a different color for your name when chatting on the server. If you don't have the default role on your server, then anybody would probably notice the fake person is a fake because they'd have the default role color. Second, servers can require that your account have a verified phone number for you to join or chat on it, which raises the barrier a bit for creating fake accounts. Finally, even if they join a mutual server and send you a private message, when you view the message, you won't see the private message history of the conversation with the real account, giving away that it's at the very least a new account. Overall, it's harder to impersonate on Discord than it is on AIM, but still certainly not impossible.
    - kemitche 5y ago
      I'd argue the opposite - it's harder to get away with impersonation. In the AIM situation, users go in "knowing" that usernames are unique, so if you see a message from user abc123, you "know" it's that person. Which means user abcl23 ("el" instead of "one") can impersonate the real user. In Discord situations, (1) the user is more likely to know that usernames can be reused, since they weren't required to make a unique one to start - so they can be more cautious of impersonation attempts, and more importantly (2) the Discord devs know names can be reused/abused, and can build better mitigations if they so choose to (like e.g. putting a disclaimer at the top of any message from a user you've never contacted before, etc.)
- upofadown 5y ago
  Wouldn't Mumble be closer to the described use case?
  - gsich 5y ago
    correct
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
    Not really. Discord has both text and voice (and IIRC video) chat. Mumble is voice only, and the UX is... dated.
    - paulryanrogers 5y ago
      Second this. Recently setup Mumble server and it's clearly meant for non-visual use because of its gaming roots. Which is good when you want TTS with chat but annoying to learn and navigate. I suspect it's primary use case is push to talk voice communicate in games.
- O_H_E 5y ago
  Not @fish45 but as someone in a similar situation, probably because "people our age" where already using it for gaming. Simple network effects. Nobody got out of their way to compare the best alternative from a technical and privacy related perspectives. People just started using what they were used to, and now Discord is freaking emourms in that area. High school classes, university cohors (ie. CS'24), university program (ie. Electrical Engineering), specific sources...etc everybody around me is using discord.
Jonovono 5y ago
What do you feel is missing from Discord?
- truth_ 5y ago
  LaTeX support!
  - aqfamnzc 5y ago
    MathBot fills that void although in a bit of a hack-y way. Native Latex would indeed be nice
    - truth_ 5y ago
      They said on Twitter that they have no plans now to include it.
- 3PS 5y ago
  Personally, I wish the desktop client was a bit more lightweight. I understand why they went with Electron, and I don't think they could have afforded their speed of iterated development as a small company otherwise, but I still wish their app was a bit lighter on my laptop. I'm especially disappointed that cordless [1], a very usable third-party terminal-based client for Discord, was banned due to a ToS violation. Secondly, I wish there was better support for E2E encryption, even just in direct messages. I wouldn't even mind it as a paid feature.
  - MawKKe 5y ago
    Similiar issue with the browser client. I observed it eating away 40% cpu doing...nothing? I can't do anything else with my laptop If I want to be heard or understood by others
    - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
      Yet Discord still provides a richer feature set with less browser UI lag than Zulip.
2iP1zbR 5y ago
> Teamspeak, which has other problems like server admins viewing the IP addresses of other users in the server, if that counts
- superkuh 5y ago
  The employees and their contractors and related at Discord corporate can see your IP address too and much more. Luckily it won't be Microsoft owning it as they could correlate against their software empire too. But Discord does have significant profit motive to collect information about you. In fact, their entire proprietary protocol, client, and restriction of clients is based around ensuring this.
  - ripdog 5y ago
    He wasn't talking about mass data collection used to sell advertising, he was talking about a the admin of a server with maybe a dozen users having access to his IP, which potentially could be used for DDOS or geolocation. The kind of 'data collection' which could have visible impacts upon his life.
    - Topgamer7 5y ago
      Or someone with knowledge could port scan you and actually attack you to gain a foothold in your network.
      - ripdog 5y ago
        Of course, but it seems fairly unlikely that the average gamer is running public-facing internet services.
        jfim 5y ago
        There are some games that run peer to peer connections, and for those to work, they require inbound connections to work. As far as the security of the average game codebase is concerned, I'd say it's pretty terrible as nobody really audits these codebases for buffer overflows/RCEs.
w0m 5y ago
We used Vent like this for a decade; we just always had a big call going at all times with my HS friends post graduation.
- Topgamer7 5y ago
  God there's a name I haven't heard for a decade or so.
MentallyRetired 5y ago
The kids are using Guilded and dropping Discord these days, from what I hear.
- DoctorOW 5y ago
  Just Googling it, I haven't seen what makes it better than Discord. It reads like an alternative for the sake of competing. Not a bad idea, but I think it'll always be lagging behind like the wake of Facebook/YouTube/Reddit clones we've seen over the years.
  - guptaneil 5y ago
    Guilded eng here... in general, our marketing focuses heavily on chat because that's the first feature people switching from Discord will evaluate as table stakes, but our thesis is that team communication shouldn't be limited to just 1 format. To that end, we have lots of different channel types (calendar, forums, docs, media, etc). Admittedly our primary focus is esports teams, so a lot of our features are geared towards that (like inter-server tournament brackets). In terms of product roadmap though, you can think of it like how Basecamp is to Slack. We think one really well-built and integrated tool is better than having to juggle dozens of separate tools when managing a team/project/whatever. Hope that helps!
brundolf 5y ago
As a 29 year old, similar (to a lesser extent) deal. I've used Discord a huge amount over the past year, mostly for gaming but sometimes while playing different games at the same time/just hanging out.
- sunpazed 5y ago
  As a 43 year old, I’ve been using Discord to collaborate within a small developer community across Europe and the United States (I’m in Australia). Since the pandemic, we’ve done more than code — supporting one another in our various COVID circumstances.
gfodor 5y ago
You might like what I am working on - it’s aiming to be Discord + Minecraft: https://jel.app https://jel.app
- DoctorOW 5y ago
  This looks really interesting. It solves a problem my Discord server has specifically. We do online improv and while most of the members don't have cameras we find the lack of a visual component is detrimental to the experience. I notice that you have a support Discord, maybe a Discord integration would be good.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    Yes for chat I am using Synapse/Matrix and will be adding Discord bridging.
O_H_E 5y ago
I [and household] are now in a similar situation. At first, students got to use what they were already use to, but when the pandemic got painful and everybody flooded to online, thing went crazy. Discord is freaking enormous in that area rn. Servers for High school classes, university cohorts (ie. CS'24), university programs (ie. Electrical Engineering), There is even a course I am taking at uni where we have an official server with the teaching team, profs, auth with uni credentials, and a freaking ad-hoc ticketing system. It is bonkers how much systematization is done through these bots.
- hemloc_io 5y ago
  Haha love how people have rediscovered the functionality and joys of IRC and the like!
  - holler 5y ago
    Totally... If you enjoy the text/irc aspect, I welcome you to check out https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im, a new realtime public discussion site very much inspired by growing up using aol chat/irc/icq/aim and others. I think we live at an amazing juncture of technology and ideas, where excellent communication software like irc that was always limited by it's own access requirements (install something, client, server, huh?), can now be made accessible to the masses, unlocking and hopefully creating entirely new experiences for people to enjoy! I'll be doing a livestream on AWS Twitch on Thursday discussing Sqwok.im if you're interested check it out.
    - ViViDboarder 5y ago
      Or, if you enjoy the text/irc aspect, irc is still very much a thing!
      - holler 5y ago
        Certainly agree! but it's still limited in use by design.. with Sqwok I'm trying to build something that anyone can use without any technical knowledge at all - Just open the url. I'm on freenode daily :D
celim307 5y ago
I’m near middle age and discord is how I still talk to my friends from high school, college, and past jobs. My high school friends are pretty close now with my work friends, despite only ever have interacted on discord. It’s hands down the communication tool i use the most in my personal life
- debaserab2 5y ago
  Same here. What used to be a private IRC channel evolved into a Skype group chat and finally several years ago evolved into a Discord server. We game together often and even have poker nights through it. It's been a huge boon to my social life during the pandemic. I'm really glad MS is not buying Discord after seeing what they did to Skype.
dijit 5y ago
I used to use IRC+Mumble for this 13 or so years ago. You _can_ live without proprietary stuff, though I 100% agree it's not as flashy or convenient.
nkrisc 5y ago
Teamspeak and Ventrilo were used similarly back in the 00s. I was part of different gaming communities and people would hang out in channels and hop in and out. The only difference was we had to use forums for chatting and posting images.
tru3_power 5y ago
The voice chat rooms reminds me exactly of this program called Ventrillo or “vent” as we used to call it back when I was in high school. I’m officially old! https://www.ventrilo.com/ https://www.ventrilo.com/
- lacker 5y ago
  okay oldie... when I was in high school if you wanted to talk to your friends while playing games with them you both needed a second phone line, so your 56k modems could use the other line to play Doom
  - gabereiser 5y ago
    Roger Wilco
  - exhaze 5y ago
    Why would you subject yourself to that? Just have them come over and help you carry your heavy tower and even heavier CRT to LAN at their house, even if it’s a mile away (me and friends literally did this in Fremont, CA - though I believe it might have been a bit less than a mile)
    - derwiki 5y ago
      I hosted a LAN party for my friends because I wanted to practice setting up a small network. It’s funny to think that was once semi-challenging.
      - hkmurakami 5y ago
        Not funny. Major PTSD coming back!!!
      - Fuzzwah 5y ago
        The pain inflicted when someone had to leave the LAN and the BNC chain had to be broken and reconfigured.... Or... Someone getting totally owned in Doom cracking it and disconnecting a terminator. Great times.
simonh 5y ago
My daughters are 16 and 17 and use it exactly the same way. It’s far more valuable to them than any social media. My TTRPG group meets on discord too.
sircastor 5y ago
A discord chat got me through one of my very difficult classes in university. I think without it I probably would have passed, but probably wouldn’t have understood the material half as well.
belgesel 5y ago
I believe before Discord got the high ground there was a program called Curse. I wonder if it is still functional.
- fredzel 5y ago
  Curse Voice was discontinued few years ago, after Amazon bought Curse and later turned it into Twitch app
Siira 5y ago
Telegram groups' voice chat seems pretty similar.
surge 5y ago
https://guilded.gg https://guilded.gg is pretty decent

by fish45 5y ago

lrvick 5y ago

Why not matrix?

y2bd 5y ago
AFAIK there are no Matrix clients with voice channels.
pyr0hu 5y ago
Discord is free, no need for maintenance and much easier to onboard non-tech friends IMO.
- kevincox 5y ago
  There are also many free Matrix severs. But I agree that Discord has much more UX polish right now. (Especially around onboarding).
rakoo 5y ago
Matrix the protocol is not there yet. Element, its main client, lacks too many features to have the same experience: - No concept of servers (in discord parlance). Its equivalent (matrix spaces, in https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/msc1772/proposals/1772-groups-as-rooms.md https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/msc177...) is in progress - No included audio/video calls. You have to link them manually and use a third-party stack, such as Jitsi - Even if you have Jitsi the experience is not the same. Discord's experience is like a chat room, except with audio and video. In Element it's more like a standard call
- lbotos 5y ago
  > - No included audio/video calls. You have to link them manually and use a third-party stack, such as Jitsi To be explicit, no group audio/video. I run my own Matrix server for my partner and I and it uses webRTC based audio out of the box for 1:1 calls which we use every day, and sometimes video. No Jitsi enabled in my config. (I only share this so other readers can gauge if Matrix can meet their needs.)
  - kevincox 5y ago
    It is also worth noting that the WebRTC calls are E2E encrypted and look fantastic as they are often peer-to-peer so you can get an amazing connection if you have the bandwidth available.
    - pkulak 5y ago
      I'm blown away by the audio and video quality of my Matrix calls. I always thought it was because, as I run my own server, there's no bandwidth limit, but I hadn't considered the whole peer-to-peer thing.
  - miketery 5y ago
    What client do you use on your devices to talk via the server?
    - lbotos 5y ago
      For now element, but I hope to add the functionality to Ditto and switch to that.
  - boojums 5y ago
    Mind sharing the Synapse configuration changes you made to enable the audio/video calls over peer-to-peer?
    - lbotos 5y ago
echelon 5y ago
My username and favorite aliases were taken. Discord allows anyone to share the same username. It appends a nearly invisible hash to disambiguate, and you can even change it. Discord does usernames right.
- toolz 5y ago
  hmm, so on public discord servers if someone copies my nickname and pretends to be me, someone might not easily notice? Seems like a pretty readily used vulnerability. I remember back in high school on AIM someone made a username very similar to mine and said some nasty things to a girl I was talking to - she told me to stop talking to her and I didn't figure out why until years later. I imagine the same exploit could be done more easily if you can use the same username and discord actively tries to hide the hash. Maybe I'm just overly sensitive since impersonation has hurt me, though.
  - Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
    Depends on the setup of the Discord server. Many servers have different "roles" created, though often they're just nothing more than a title and a different color for your name when chatting on the server. If you don't have the default role on your server, then anybody would probably notice the fake person is a fake because they'd have the default role color. Second, servers can require that your account have a verified phone number for you to join or chat on it, which raises the barrier a bit for creating fake accounts. Finally, even if they join a mutual server and send you a private message, when you view the message, you won't see the private message history of the conversation with the real account, giving away that it's at the very least a new account. Overall, it's harder to impersonate on Discord than it is on AIM, but still certainly not impossible.
  - kemitche 5y ago
    I'd argue the opposite - it's harder to get away with impersonation. In the AIM situation, users go in "knowing" that usernames are unique, so if you see a message from user abc123, you "know" it's that person. Which means user abcl23 ("el" instead of "one") can impersonate the real user. In Discord situations, (1) the user is more likely to know that usernames can be reused, since they weren't required to make a unique one to start - so they can be more cautious of impersonation attempts, and more importantly (2) the Discord devs know names can be reused/abused, and can build better mitigations if they so choose to (like e.g. putting a disclaimer at the top of any message from a user you've never contacted before, etc.)
upofadown 5y ago
Wouldn't Mumble be closer to the described use case?
- gsich 5y ago
  correct
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  Not really. Discord has both text and voice (and IIRC video) chat. Mumble is voice only, and the UX is... dated.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    Second this. Recently setup Mumble server and it's clearly meant for non-visual use because of its gaming roots. Which is good when you want TTS with chat but annoying to learn and navigate. I suspect it's primary use case is push to talk voice communicate in games.
O_H_E 5y ago
Not @fish45 but as someone in a similar situation, probably because "people our age" where already using it for gaming. Simple network effects. Nobody got out of their way to compare the best alternative from a technical and privacy related perspectives. People just started using what they were used to, and now Discord is freaking emourms in that area. High school classes, university cohors (ie. CS'24), university program (ie. Electrical Engineering), specific sources...etc everybody around me is using discord.

Jonovono 5y ago

What do you feel is missing from Discord?

truth_ 5y ago
LaTeX support!
- aqfamnzc 5y ago
  MathBot fills that void although in a bit of a hack-y way. Native Latex would indeed be nice
  - truth_ 5y ago
    They said on Twitter that they have no plans now to include it.
3PS 5y ago
Personally, I wish the desktop client was a bit more lightweight. I understand why they went with Electron, and I don't think they could have afforded their speed of iterated development as a small company otherwise, but I still wish their app was a bit lighter on my laptop. I'm especially disappointed that cordless [1], a very usable third-party terminal-based client for Discord, was banned due to a ToS violation. Secondly, I wish there was better support for E2E encryption, even just in direct messages. I wouldn't even mind it as a paid feature.
- MawKKe 5y ago
  Similiar issue with the browser client. I observed it eating away 40% cpu doing...nothing? I can't do anything else with my laptop If I want to be heard or understood by others
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    Yet Discord still provides a richer feature set with less browser UI lag than Zulip.

2iP1zbR 5y ago

> Teamspeak, which has other problems like server admins viewing the IP addresses of other users in the server, if that counts

superkuh 5y ago
The employees and their contractors and related at Discord corporate can see your IP address too and much more. Luckily it won't be Microsoft owning it as they could correlate against their software empire too. But Discord does have significant profit motive to collect information about you. In fact, their entire proprietary protocol, client, and restriction of clients is based around ensuring this.
- ripdog 5y ago
  He wasn't talking about mass data collection used to sell advertising, he was talking about a the admin of a server with maybe a dozen users having access to his IP, which potentially could be used for DDOS or geolocation. The kind of 'data collection' which could have visible impacts upon his life.
  - Topgamer7 5y ago
    Or someone with knowledge could port scan you and actually attack you to gain a foothold in your network.
    - ripdog 5y ago
      Of course, but it seems fairly unlikely that the average gamer is running public-facing internet services.
      - jfim 5y ago
        There are some games that run peer to peer connections, and for those to work, they require inbound connections to work. As far as the security of the average game codebase is concerned, I'd say it's pretty terrible as nobody really audits these codebases for buffer overflows/RCEs.

w0m 5y ago

We used Vent like this for a decade; we just always had a big call going at all times with my HS friends post graduation.

Topgamer7 5y ago
God there's a name I haven't heard for a decade or so.

MentallyRetired 5y ago

The kids are using Guilded and dropping Discord these days, from what I hear.

DoctorOW 5y ago
Just Googling it, I haven't seen what makes it better than Discord. It reads like an alternative for the sake of competing. Not a bad idea, but I think it'll always be lagging behind like the wake of Facebook/YouTube/Reddit clones we've seen over the years.
- guptaneil 5y ago
  Guilded eng here... in general, our marketing focuses heavily on chat because that's the first feature people switching from Discord will evaluate as table stakes, but our thesis is that team communication shouldn't be limited to just 1 format. To that end, we have lots of different channel types (calendar, forums, docs, media, etc). Admittedly our primary focus is esports teams, so a lot of our features are geared towards that (like inter-server tournament brackets). In terms of product roadmap though, you can think of it like how Basecamp is to Slack. We think one really well-built and integrated tool is better than having to juggle dozens of separate tools when managing a team/project/whatever. Hope that helps!

brundolf 5y ago

As a 29 year old, similar (to a lesser extent) deal. I've used Discord a huge amount over the past year, mostly for gaming but sometimes while playing different games at the same time/just hanging out.

sunpazed 5y ago
As a 43 year old, I’ve been using Discord to collaborate within a small developer community across Europe and the United States (I’m in Australia). Since the pandemic, we’ve done more than code — supporting one another in our various COVID circumstances.

gfodor 5y ago

You might like what I am working on - it’s aiming to be Discord + Minecraft: https://jel.app https://jel.app

DoctorOW 5y ago
This looks really interesting. It solves a problem my Discord server has specifically. We do online improv and while most of the members don't have cameras we find the lack of a visual component is detrimental to the experience. I notice that you have a support Discord, maybe a Discord integration would be good.
- gfodor 5y ago
  Yes for chat I am using Synapse/Matrix and will be adding Discord bridging.

O_H_E 5y ago

I [and household] are now in a similar situation. At first, students got to use what they were already use to, but when the pandemic got painful and everybody flooded to online, thing went crazy. Discord is freaking enormous in that area rn. Servers for High school classes, university cohorts (ie. CS'24), university programs (ie. Electrical Engineering), There is even a course I am taking at uni where we have an official server with the teaching team, profs, auth with uni credentials, and a freaking ad-hoc ticketing system. It is bonkers how much systematization is done through these bots.

hemloc_io 5y ago
Haha love how people have rediscovered the functionality and joys of IRC and the like!
- holler 5y ago
  Totally... If you enjoy the text/irc aspect, I welcome you to check out https://sqwok.im https://sqwok.im, a new realtime public discussion site very much inspired by growing up using aol chat/irc/icq/aim and others. I think we live at an amazing juncture of technology and ideas, where excellent communication software like irc that was always limited by it's own access requirements (install something, client, server, huh?), can now be made accessible to the masses, unlocking and hopefully creating entirely new experiences for people to enjoy! I'll be doing a livestream on AWS Twitch on Thursday discussing Sqwok.im if you're interested check it out.
  - ViViDboarder 5y ago
    Or, if you enjoy the text/irc aspect, irc is still very much a thing!
    - holler 5y ago
      Certainly agree! but it's still limited in use by design.. with Sqwok I'm trying to build something that anyone can use without any technical knowledge at all - Just open the url. I'm on freenode daily :D

celim307 5y ago

I’m near middle age and discord is how I still talk to my friends from high school, college, and past jobs. My high school friends are pretty close now with my work friends, despite only ever have interacted on discord. It’s hands down the communication tool i use the most in my personal life

debaserab2 5y ago
Same here. What used to be a private IRC channel evolved into a Skype group chat and finally several years ago evolved into a Discord server. We game together often and even have poker nights through it. It's been a huge boon to my social life during the pandemic. I'm really glad MS is not buying Discord after seeing what they did to Skype.

dijit 5y ago

I used to use IRC+Mumble for this 13 or so years ago. You _can_ live without proprietary stuff, though I 100% agree it's not as flashy or convenient.

nkrisc 5y ago

Teamspeak and Ventrilo were used similarly back in the 00s. I was part of different gaming communities and people would hang out in channels and hop in and out. The only difference was we had to use forums for chatting and posting images.

tru3_power 5y ago

The voice chat rooms reminds me exactly of this program called Ventrillo or “vent” as we used to call it back when I was in high school. I’m officially old! https://www.ventrilo.com/ https://www.ventrilo.com/

lacker 5y ago
okay oldie... when I was in high school if you wanted to talk to your friends while playing games with them you both needed a second phone line, so your 56k modems could use the other line to play Doom
- gabereiser 5y ago
  Roger Wilco
- exhaze 5y ago
  Why would you subject yourself to that? Just have them come over and help you carry your heavy tower and even heavier CRT to LAN at their house, even if it’s a mile away (me and friends literally did this in Fremont, CA - though I believe it might have been a bit less than a mile)
  - derwiki 5y ago
    I hosted a LAN party for my friends because I wanted to practice setting up a small network. It’s funny to think that was once semi-challenging.
    - hkmurakami 5y ago
      Not funny. Major PTSD coming back!!!
    - Fuzzwah 5y ago
      The pain inflicted when someone had to leave the LAN and the BNC chain had to be broken and reconfigured.... Or... Someone getting totally owned in Doom cracking it and disconnecting a terminator. Great times.

simonh 5y ago

My daughters are 16 and 17 and use it exactly the same way. It’s far more valuable to them than any social media. My TTRPG group meets on discord too.

sircastor 5y ago

A discord chat got me through one of my very difficult classes in university. I think without it I probably would have passed, but probably wouldn’t have understood the material half as well.

belgesel 5y ago

I believe before Discord got the high ground there was a program called Curse. I wonder if it is still functional.

fredzel 5y ago
Curse Voice was discontinued few years ago, after Amazon bought Curse and later turned it into Twitch app

Siira 5y ago

Telegram groups' voice chat seems pretty similar.

surge 5y ago

https://guilded.gg https://guilded.gg is pretty decent