Discord [+]
Aug 17 2020
Discord is a discussion group service. Anybody can create a Discord group and invite people (or make it a public group that anyone can join). A server will have channels grouped into sections. You can tier people so that channels are visible to certain tiers.
A channel is, like IRC, one continuous conversation. There is no threading. Messages can include pictures, video, files and emotes. Users can be notified about every message on a per channel or per server basis, or narrow it down to important messages (@here @everyone) or just to messages that tag you.
Admins can add bots to Discord for functionality. I've seen birthday bots (register your birthday then it'll announce it), music bots, dice rolling bots, etc. Sometimes there are too many bots but you can block them and block other users too for that matter.
I believe Discord was first created for gamers so they could do voice chat and coordination during games, especially games where a team has to cooperate. As such Discord retains fairly good voice chat functionality. You can set your own in and out sound levels and set other people's input level. Setting global in plus individual in levels is just good enough that you can level everyone's audio (for you personally not for everyone in the voice chat). Unfortunately there is no auto-leveling.
There is also video chat and streaming capabilities. I haven't used either.
The system is distributed. For example you can only chat with another user if both of you subscribe to a common server. Likewise you can use one servers' emotes on another server but those emotes are not generally available to people on the other server.
Discord uses a dedicated Desktop or mobile client but also has a web client interface.
Discord is free. They have a $10 per month/$100 per year Nitro subscription which gives you a selection of commercial games to play and allows you to boost two servers. Boosted servers have more features. Still, Nitro is rather pricey for what you get.
I mostly use Discord for Twitch since every channel has its own Discord server. My brother set up a Discord for our group which we use mostly for voice chat during DDO games. We have a general channel, a channel for extra Steam keys, and a channel to post video clips.
Overall it's an impressive service and a good alternative to web-only services.
A channel is, like IRC, one continuous conversation. There is no threading. Messages can include pictures, video, files and emotes. Users can be notified about every message on a per channel or per server basis, or narrow it down to important messages (@here @everyone) or just to messages that tag you.
Admins can add bots to Discord for functionality. I've seen birthday bots (register your birthday then it'll announce it), music bots, dice rolling bots, etc. Sometimes there are too many bots but you can block them and block other users too for that matter.
I believe Discord was first created for gamers so they could do voice chat and coordination during games, especially games where a team has to cooperate. As such Discord retains fairly good voice chat functionality. You can set your own in and out sound levels and set other people's input level. Setting global in plus individual in levels is just good enough that you can level everyone's audio (for you personally not for everyone in the voice chat). Unfortunately there is no auto-leveling.
There is also video chat and streaming capabilities. I haven't used either.
The system is distributed. For example you can only chat with another user if both of you subscribe to a common server. Likewise you can use one servers' emotes on another server but those emotes are not generally available to people on the other server.
Discord uses a dedicated Desktop or mobile client but also has a web client interface.
Discord is free. They have a $10 per month/$100 per year Nitro subscription which gives you a selection of commercial games to play and allows you to boost two servers. Boosted servers have more features. Still, Nitro is rather pricey for what you get.
I mostly use Discord for Twitch since every channel has its own Discord server. My brother set up a Discord for our group which we use mostly for voice chat during DDO games. We have a general channel, a channel for extra Steam keys, and a channel to post video clips.
Overall it's an impressive service and a good alternative to web-only services.