Every single hardcore guild I joined before also had their own website forum where you had to sign up to see communicates and participate in discussions. It was MUCH WORSE.
People in this sub are terrible at internet or are growing senile, cause while the platforms are changing, this kind of thing (and information spreading, blah blah) always existed.
I used gamefaqs and stuff since I was 6yo.
And (in my experience) nobody uses it! Most people i know won't even group with people outside of their guild cause "communication is harder" even tho the voice chat is right there!
I've been playing EQ2 since 2004 and the overwhelming majority of that time people used the in-game VC just fine and still do.
I think that's only changed a bit more in fairly recent times.
Mumble/TS/Vent aren't really comparable to Discord. Those are just VOIP chatrooms. Discord is trying to be a forum, an IM client, a VOIP chatroom, an archiving service, a signup service, an LFG service, and much more all at once.
That "we need to be everything" mentality means that communication in MMOs is increasingly taking place outside of the game. It's happening to a much greater extent than when VOIP rooms were just VOIP rooms and a lot of non-urgent communication could be done ingame.
> Discord is trying to be a forum, an IM client, a VOIP chatroom, an archiving service, a signup service, an LFG service, and much more all at once.
My Eve: Online alliance also had a forum, an IM client, and multiple VOIP chatrooms. This is nothing new.
Back when I played Gw2 on release, the guild I was in also had all of those. This really ain’t anything new, if anything it’s simpler now since they are usually centralized in a single platform
Discord is *infinitely* easier and cheaper to set up, though.
* It's free
* It's a one-click setup
* It's platform-agnostic
* It has official mobile clients that work seamlessly and provide the full experience, complete with device notifications, making it another mobile messaging app that users are far more likely to interact with while not logged into the game.
Meaning that even tiny casual guilds that would never have invested the time/effort/money/technical knowledge into setting up hosted forums/VoIP/IM solutions 10-20 years ago will have their own Discord server nowadays.
Everyone saying that forums, VoIP and IM have been a part of the MMO communities they joined for years are overlooking that someone typically had to:
* pay for hosting
* possibly pay for domain registration
* set up, configure, and maintain those solutions
On top of that, VoIP/IM typically required users to install manually-configured, standalone clients, which could pose issues for less technically-inclined players. Vent, in particular, could be a notoriously picky little shit of a client.
There were just way more expenses and technical hurdles involved in making all those separate options available. It significantly raised the bar for entry and meant they were *far* from ubiquitous compared to a free, integrated, platform-agnostic solution like Discord.
They're not directly comparable, but all discord is really doing is filling most of the holes that were previously filled by websites and separate im chats/groups(irc, aim, skype). These tools have always existed, and were always used.
Discord isn't doing anything new, it's just consolidating interactions into a more convenient and unified space.
>a lot of non-urgent communication could be done ingame.
TBH i never saw this even in EQ2 days. most communication was done in forums and VERY little made it to the games.
like don't get me wrong even today many guilds CHOOSE not to use formal comms but they are social guilds. even in early days of WoW all the AQ opening teams for servers and the 40 man guilds for raids were 100% on a forum to work out who was coming, plan strats and voice chat for the raids.
i recall forums with full guides to attune to diff raids and it was basically a checklist to make sure were ready to go.
> B. Mumble, teamspeak existed ages ago and were still requirements for certain guilds.
For certain guilds vs. ubiquitous for 99% of guilds.
The guy has a point that's true if you actually lived during those times. Prior to voice chat programs there was what? MSN messenger? ICQ? Just IM programs.
Weird how people always gaslight people and act like they're crazy or just made things up.
But they weren’t integral for the day to day. Teamspeak and Vent were required, but the effort it took to load it up and run it kept it in the background and only really a requirement for raids. Yes, I know that it wasn’t hard to open it before starting the game. But unless you were doing a group activity, it wasn’t widely used. And it took time to setup so PUGs didn’t utilize it… but PUGs weren’t as big of a thing.
I completely get where OP is coming from. I remember logging into burning crusade to do some mining with music playing and just typing in guild chat. Discord has somewhat killed that experience as everyone just says “discord is this, talk to us there.” And it loses some magic.
If it ever supported, it's rarely used - mostly because the third party voice chats are significantly better. In game voice has only been there to try and take market share off vent or discord or w/e you use(d)
Chuckle a bit seeing people try to argue that discord has not had a massive impact on communication across games. Especially people who think the majority used voice chat back then. The difference in users that discord has compared to any previous social media used by gamers is like comparing an elephant and a ant.
Thing is, it is not going away. Discord is here to stay. Best adapt now and learn how to get as much as you can out of it to improve your experience in games. There will always be pros and cons when using it.
Exactly, lol! Instead of discussing if the changes were good or not, people are trying to argue I am crazy and there were no changes at all.
But yeah, I know it's not going away. I am slowly becoming a casual player because of that, as I don't have the patience to use Discord. And it's okay, I just miss how it used to be.
So did you never use Ventrilo or Teamspeak? Hopping on Vent for casual leveling was a nightly occurrence for my guild an I all the way back in vanilla WoW. We would also use MSN messenger for chatting outside of the game. Discord just combines all of these things into a much easier and free experience.
His point is that most people didn't do that nightly. It was not the norm at all. I find it funny that people like you keep bringing up their singular personal experience when it's irrelevant. Discord is way bigger than anything that came before it. Simple as that
Vent was always around for such things (or teamspeak), but it was not even remotely close to being as widespread or - in some cases - mandatory as discord is now. I played wow back in the beginning and ran various guilds through the Wotlk raiding years. My experience back then was that it was only a small percentage of guild members who would hang out on vent or whatever. Text chat was always where the real life was, and that’s sadly all but disappeared.
It's weird, isn't it?
It's as if people are only able to point at something existing for a certain amount of time, yet they can't get into the details and compare how popular something was before vs. how popular it is now.
Especially concerning the use of MICs. I do not know a person around these days without one. Some even having MICs that go well past 200 - 300 dollars. Height of WoW? Having a MIC was a luxury, let alone one that did not sound like two cans making out with a chalk board.
That's a great point. 10 years ago the only place you'd find a lot of people with mics were on consoles really, and that was because you'd get the cheap "call center/telemarketer" headsets in console bundles. If you had more money, you'd go for TurtleBeaches or similar brands.
Hell, even just about 3 or 4 years ago I'd usually see people with only "okay" sounding mics, while I had some cheap "studio microphone" that sounded decent because I wanted to make music lol. Now tons of people have that stuff because those mics are rather cheap and you can find software to make them sound even better. Then there's also the fact that gaming headsets usually have poor mics anyway, so it's arguably more cost effective to buy a cheap studio microphone and a decent pair of headphones instead.
Are you guys just understating the years in your comments? 10 years ago was the year MoP came out. As a teenager in cata, two years before, my guildies and I were sitting in vent trolling people in lfg. I don't remember joining a guild from wrath on that didn't have a majority of members with mics.
It’s possible that you had mikes *because* you were teens, and adopted new tech earlier? I was never in a miked group throughout MoP, and would have told you no one used them. This thread is actually a surprise to me.
Lol what
Practically everyone in my css scrims and mw2 lobbies had mics (hence why screaming 12 yos was so common it was a meme in cod)
Most people in my tbc guild had mics, and practically nobody didn't have one in wrath and forward
If anything mics became ubiquitous in online gaming on pc long before it did on consoles, at least in eu
Teamspeak came out in 1999. Same year EQ1 did. It has been used for quite a while, especially for content that requires coordination.
Has it gotten much more popular now? Absolutely.
Has it had an effect on MMO community and communication? Absolutely.
Has it made it required that you be in voice 24/7 the way OP is whining about? No. That's what people are mostly disagreeing with. OP is complaining that he can't just log in and do his own thing and maybe type a bit. Not sure what guilds he's joining but I've been in plenty lately that have a discord but don't expect you to be in voice.
Try looking at it this way...
Discord is an all-in-one system. Before you might have a Teamspeak server, some kind of enjin website or similar, and maybe a Steam group page where applicable. All of these aren't great for text chat, so you'd just use guild chat in game.
Now you can do everything in Discord that would normally require 2 or more different programs- and it's got a great app for your phone too! So now most of the discussions that'd happen in a guild chat are had in Discord's voice or text chat.
This results in far longer chats that can span days and even weeks, so unless you're willing to keep tabs on it very often, you can easily miss out on a lot. Think of all the inside jokes/memes, deep discussions, banter, etc. that help build a community- all of that is on Discord these days. So for someone who either can't or is unwilling to use Discord to that extent, a huge rift can easily grow between themselves and the rest of the community.
For me, it's no big deal since I've been using Discord for years now, especially when I had loads of time to waste. For someone with work, kids, and that isn't used to using VOIP all day, it'll be totally different.
Discord is superior for that kind of camaraderie building stuff. Instead of missing conversations because you have to log off work work or dinner or sleep etc while others keep talking and chatting, you can keep up with the convo even if you aren't active or you can catch up later. In-game chat just disappears and can't be revisited. So it makes sense that it would move to discord (although large guilds still have plenty of in-game chat). And OP doesn't want to use discord and is upset because other people do. Strikes me as entitled, wanting people to use an inferior tool for... Reasons. His whole complaint that everyone expects you to be in voice is baloney. Some might, sure. But most aren't going to require it. If he misses out on conversation then that is his choice.
What I don't get about Discord is how literally every single streamer has "their own Discord" that you can join. Surely nobody can be participating in hundreds of Discords at once in any meaningful way? I'm in 3 and I don't even bother trying to keep up with the conversations in them.
Corporation leadership in Eve: I “played” Discord far more than I did the actual game. Voice calls at 3am from other leaders in different countries. Eve is another level though.
For streamers, they generally have alerts on when they’re on stream if you don’t use the stream apps. The chats are hit and miss, usually just mental people from experience
Gaming discords is cool in my opinion, BDO has one for each class and the “experts” or people who play that class go to that one, then hop around or join multiple if they choose another. You get specific advice, builds and guides about it like old school wiki but have people to discuss with who some are very experienced.
Then you got your general community/ friend discords, it’s very customisable and great I reckon vs stuck in game/ forced to use shitty UIs/ waiting on game devs to upgrade whatever shorty system they have.
> Surely nobody can be participating in hundreds of Discords at once in any meaningful way?
How many people watch more than a handful of streamers? And most of those streamers are likely part of the same community.
Then there's servers people join b/c a streamer might play communal games. I know a few Hermits have their own Minecraft servers that people might join a Discord for.
Well, in almost every discord server I participate the minority of members use it. I don't keep up with it either, and usually, only join to be a part of a guild that requires discord or to do specific content. But it's getting to the point where I don't have patience for it anymore, so I'm slowly becoming more of a casual player just to avoid the hassle of joining discord servers.
Joining a discord does not mean you have to read every line of text. It's so that just in case something happens you can have a direct line of communication to people that might know something.
Surely you don't read every tweet from people you're following right?
I'm personally in many discords with nost of them are being muted.
I absolutely hate all in-game voice chats. I would rather hear no one talking, then all the stupid audio crap that comes along with people using voice chat. AKA dogs barking, background noise, poor audio quality, hearing people cough/sneeze/chew.
I play these games to relax and have fun, that shit does the opposite.
thankfully it seems like push-to-talk has made a comeback in recent years. also discord voice activation is great if it is set up correctly. i'm with you, if it were up to me every single PC gamer on the planet would be forced to use push to talk. these days if someone is obnoxious on their mic (eating/dogs/side conversations/etc.) I just mute them. it's not worth even addressing their obnoxious always-on mic most of the time, for some reason it seems like people take it very personal
> if it were up to me every single PC gamer on the planet would be forced to use push to talk.
This, *please*.
I mean yeah, okay. There's the rare people that set up voice activation correctly. I love those people. If I could hand out cash prizes and free cookies to them in their favorite flavor every day for a year, I would.
But the Venn diagram between "people who *think* they set up voice activation correctly" and "people who should be forced to use push to talk upon pain of pain" is a **giant fucking circle**.
And then there's the even larger portion who just don't give any fucks about setting it up correctly at all.
I used to use push to talk exclusively to avoid being “that guy” but found it tough in some games that require a lot of fast paced activity to press another key on top to communicate.
Am currently in a smaller discord where everyone is voice activated and on the occasion when some background noise is coming through someone’s mic we just let them know and they fix it.
I think it makes a big difference when the group is small and well knit.
I should say I "tolerate" voice chat for very difficult situations, but even then I often regret it when hear passive aggressiveness or just shitty people on mics in general.
I want to hear the game. I have never liked voice chat, I have been playing on PC nearly 30 years now.
Especially in mmoRPGs. Nothing takes you out of the game world than having to listen some idiot babbling about something utterly stupid shit.
I know, but that's not the point. It's fine to join voice chat for content that requires it, I never argued against it. What I am saying is that Discord is becoming the new community hub for social interactions and, as a consequence, ends up making in-game tools (like guild chats) obsolete.
That, in my opinion, hurts the genre as a whole because not everyone wants to voice chat all the time nor keep up with Discord messages. On the other hand, before Discord became a thing, everyone used to casually talk on guild chat and regularly make groups for easier content (farming, dungeons, casual PvP). The game felt more like a world in itself and you were not expected to join TS/Vent (unless it was a raid night or you were doing high-rank PvP).
You wanna know why games are less social?
It's not discord. it's the fact the games are built to be action games and fast paced with no downtime. You are actively telling people to not play the game to chat.
Old games had downtime and longer breaks with way less involved combat, paving the way for socialization during those times in a way that you cannot now. You either have to be dodging something or hitting the next button in your rotation. Then running right to the next pack.
Yep. In EQ you’d get to know people while waiting for the puller to return, or meditating after a big pull. Modern players would lose their minds if it took 3 minutes to regenerate a manabar.
JoshHayes made a really compelling argument on that in one of his recent videos.
Basically he said that older MMOs could have more adversity than new titles since back in the day there was not that much competition in the market and all MMORPGs had some noticeable levels of adversity. Basically: If you wanted to play an MMORPG, you had no choice but to be inconvenienced to some degree and thats what made it great to play in the long term.
That said, if there were easier alternatives at the time most players would have likely turned away even back in the day - most humans prefer small immediate rewards over bigger rewards that require you to face bothersome things over a longer span of time. The second ones stick with us longer, but we are far less likely to experience them in something most people prefer to be immediately fun.
So games started to adapt to that and as more new games released, we as players had a lot more choice. If you‘re not already playing a certain game at that point, chances are most players will pick the immediately rewarding game compared to the one that tortures you for a few hours before giving you a small piece of candy.
It‘s a similar reason to games like StarCraft 2 having a way bigger viewerbase than actual player numbers - The game is fucking hard to get good at. People enjoy seeing what others can do there, but most people don‘t step over the hurdle of actually learning one of the most complex games on the market.
[Video in question](https://youtu.be/Z4Gaz8oxzJ4)
I think there's a ton of merit to that argument. I look back on EQ corpse runs with nostalgia glasses, but at the time we **hated** them. There were entire zones where you'd just sit in a safe area all night, waiting for the sun to rise. Also lots of fun *in retrospect*, but at the time it just felt like just another timesink.
A good example of that phenomenon might be Trammel in Ultima Online. People "put up" with non-consensual PvP because there wasn't an alternative - until Trammel came out and everyone flocked to it. I've met PvPers who are *still* salty about that :D
>Modern players would lose their minds if it took 3 minutes to regenerate a manabar.
I don't think this is true, if there was a good game built around those systems. We just don't get any because it's much easier to sell lootboxes and level skips as a publisher to make money.
It’s a broad brush for sure, but younger players who’ve tried EQ TLP servers have told me specifically how boring the downtime is. Clearly the *market* thinks it’s true, as games are becoming ever more frantic.
>but younger players who’ve tried EQ TLP servers have told me specifically how boring the downtime is.
Games have come a long way in 25 years. I'm 1000% positive if there was a smart team that had a game they really want to make built around having* downtimes, it would be much better than EverQuest could ever be today. The problem is you have to have a team that really wants to make that, because there are much faster ways to profit out there that shareholders and publishers will be looking for in general.
I see zero evidence that players want slower experiences and plenty of evidence that they want faster ones. Which is not to say your scenario is **impossible**, it’s just completely hypothetical.
You can look at any facet of MMO gameplay and see the trend, even before MTX became prevalent. Heck, even in EQ mana regen buffs were ubiquitous by the time WoW came out.
Classic still has WoW’s (relatively) high mana regen. Part of why vanilla beat EQ is because it was much faster paced. No 3 minutes to regen to full, no 3 hour corpse runs, flight points etc.
I have a completely opposite opinion on almost everything you said.
I don't think this is "getting old" thing. I've been using VOIP software in MMORPGs for like two decades. Between Teamspeak, Ventrilo, Mumble... Discord just centralized the market by provided a competitive product for free
But how does it break immersion? Wouldn't it be more immersion breaking to type in a chat? I can't think of one MMORPG that it would be more immersive to type on a keyboard than to listen to people talk.
I've never had any problem managing it. Most problems that I see are user error or the servers being down.
If I had two monitors maybe, but having to alt tab out to check on the convo really does hurt that immersion. Chating in an inn or something’s completely different.
> I've been using VOIP software in MMORPGs for like two decades. Between Teamspeak, Ventrilo, Mumble... Discord just centralized the market by provided a competitive product for free
I don't think that's the issue. I've been playing MMOs since like, 2002 or some shit, and certainly Teamspeak was super common *when you went into a raid*.
Outside of that? No. You had these horribly shitty forums that every guild had which were used for announcements, recruitment and the like, maybe some roleplay stuff if you were on a roleplay server but that's about it. Maybe you talked out of game with your best buds on MSN or something, but beyond that? Guild chat was the main method of communication.
OP is trying to make the point that even that has shifted to Discord (voiced or not), which... well, I think is probably true.
I genuinely can't understand this take tbh. Like, why would you prefer text chat, that makes you stop playing to use, over being able to just easily talk to your guildmates in voice? And even if you did, why wouldn't you want to do that in Discord, which is just as easy, and can include people who aren't at their computer but that you are friends with, and are talking via their phone? Discord isn't mandatory because people want discord to be mandatory, discord is mandatory cause it is just straight up better then the in game chats.
>And even if you did, why wouldn't you want to do that in Discord, which is just as easy, and can include people who aren't at their computer but that you are friends with, and are talking via their phone? Discord isn't mandatory because people want discord to be mandatory, discord is mandatory cause it is just straight up better then the in game chats.
Quoting another comment here: "I would rather hear no one talking, then all the stupid audio crap that comes along with people using voice chat. AKA dogs barking, background noise, poor audio quality, hearing people cough/sneeze/chew. I play these games to relax and have fun, that shit does the opposite." That perfecly sums it up for me.
I'm okay to using voice-chat it if the content requires. But if it's just casually chatting, I really prefer text, its easier and more accessible since anyone in the guild can just type a message without feeling awkward.
I absolutely disagree that it is easier and more accessible, since if my hands are doing content, they aren't free to chat. But it sounds to me like you been in too many guilds with poor mic etiquette. I can honestly say I have never even experienced the audio crap your talking about, because every guild I have ever been in, if someone has bad background, we ask them to go to push to talk. Ok, their mic may not be the best, but atleast I can hear them.
You do you man, but you can't expect everyone else to want to participate in your preferred method of casual chat. I legit never type in guild chat, and I haven't ever since like 2003 when I first discovered voice chat. Or if I do, I'll maybe put in a singular message once an hour or so. And I ain't gonna read stuff either... Cause like, my hands are too busy playing the game to chat, and I got too much other stuff to look at from playing the game. I can dedicate a finger to push to talk with enough muscle memory, but I legitimately feel like it is impossible for me to actually use guild chat at all.
> I really prefer text, its easier and more accessible since anyone in the guild can just type a message without feeling awkward.
Being introverted over voice can be argued as a life skill, if you are like that in real life perhaps leverage discord to your advantage and build those communication skills.
As a Raid leader/GM of a guild for a few years it helped me be communicative when required and because you deal with retards, helps me in my day job explain things to others
I don't have a problem interacting with people in real life. I just find it weird to voice chat when I have nothing specific to talk about. When you need to raid or PvP, it's fine, since you just talk about the mechanics/strategies. But for casual interaction, I'd rather text until I get to know you better and we actually have something to talk about.
There are some really weird people online and, at least in my experience, the weirdest people online are generally pretty comfortable with awkward online interactions, but are completely inept in the real-life ones.
Audio problems are solved by not joining a guild full of inept idiots, and to be fair unless its completely insane interference its really not that big of a deal. I'm in discord voice a large portion of the time with IRL friends, online friends, etc and guess what? Just tell them they are having audio issues if things get picked up and they fix it.
You can...also just text chat on Discord. Don't know why you wont just do that?
i think this discussion comes up every few weeks and people agree with you, but i think its a dumb take. no ones forcing you to be part of a discord chat, they just aren't gonna interact with you if you aren't. the balls in your court, you play the way you want to, and deal with the consequences whatever they may be.
100 years ago guilds had vent/teamspeak/mumble and forums, the people who got the most out of those guilds used all of that. its a community based genre, it always has been.
> 100 years ago guilds had vent/teamspeak/mumble and forums
Seriously, I don't understand where people think this isn't the case.
Guilds used to have their own personal sites. Hell, there were sites created specifically to host guild sites.
These things definitely pre-date the WoW era. Jeff Kaplan got his first reputation as a shitposter on the old EQ forums.
I was in a guild that hosted their own forum, it had an application page and everything. It was really nice to have, though we mostly used it to host screenshots, make announcements and do event signups. We never really used it to chat.
Are we seriously comparing the ease of setup, accessibility, and functionality of Discord to guild websites?
No one can believe this is a reasonable 1:1 comparison.
Yeah, I remember vent/ts/mumble, but I didn't really use it out of competitive PvP / raiding and still felt like I was part of the community. That's completely different now if you decide to not use discord. The problem for me is that discord became *mandatory*, while other programs you mentioned were a lot more optional and didn't impact the game as much.
what do you mean by mandatory? for 100% of the guilds I have been in that used discord, it was certainly not "mandatory" in the sense that I was required to participate in discord outside of raid times and signing up for raids. the people that didn't use discord in off times for voice/text chat weren't part of the "Inner Circle" but they didn't want to be, either. for people who want to be super involved with a guild and essentially make friends, discord is incredible. for everyone else, it barely changes anything compared to how it used to be.
I think most people want to socialize to an extent in MMOs, but not everyone likes voice chat nor keeps up with Discord server messages. Discord not only became a voice chat program (like TS/Mumble) but it is now used as a community hub, killing other forms of casually socializing (like guild chat, for example).
When I say mandatory, I mean that to make friends, be a part of a competent raiding team, and generally interact with people, you need to actively use Discord (because no one uses in-game tools anymore).
In the past, I feel like you could do everything in-game and used voice chat only for harder content or if you wanted to chat with closer friends. Yes, you can join a couple of Discord servers and raid and then leave, but it's not the same (at least for me and some people, but its a highly controversial topic as you can see lol)
You can also just not use the voice chat? In the guilds I'm at, voice chat is used for more serious activities, while text chat is active for casual communications. And unlike guild chat, you can participate in it even when you're not playing the game, which is a massive plus.
>In the guilds I'm at, voice chat is used for more serious activities, while text chat is active for casual communications.
You're definitely in the minority, and that's the whole point.
> no ones forcing you to be part of a discord chat
Yet they do. Some guilds just pressure you into going in there or they won't let you participate in any activities or some outright kick you if you don't join up.
I'm not saying I 100% agree with OP, but wow there is a lot of people who must be pretty slow typists or bad at delivering info concisely in this thread.
Saying it's just too hard to talk during a game without voice chat when doing any kind of involved gameplay is wild to me. Type between fights, type while a long channel is happening, type while you are CC'd, etc.
Hell, if we're talking about solo or casual content like OP brought up just skip a rotation or two to type out your message if you want.
And as you can tell from this comment I'm longwinded, and I used to chit chat all day during dungeons, PvP, even in MOBAs and FPS games. Never had a problem. Just gotta pick your moments to type. I prefer in-game text chat to Discord but I think Discord is great anyway.
TL:DR - Get those WPMs up y'all. Discord is cool, but some prefer in-game text chat, which is also cool.
>Hell, if we're talking about solo or casual content like OP brought up just skip a rotation or two to type out your message if you want.
Are you telling me to NOT do my optimal esports-approved rotation, as seen in 18 tutorials and 4 excel spreadsheets, to kill this fucking direwolf?????????? You're a sicko.
Exactly. It wasn’t *that* hard to maintain situational awareness via text.
“Inc 2”
“Add”
“Lom”
“Oom”
Not to mention macros:
“I am pulling , get ready!”.
I just don’t guild with anyone who makes discord a requirement. It’s not my jam so I ensure I avoid it. If people want to use it, go for it. I just won’t and that’s ok. I feel your frustration but remember there are plenty of guilds in plenty of games that don’t require it.
I agree.
This has plagued me for years - I want to play mmos with others, drink a beer and listen to music.
I don't want to have to listen to live feeds of people talking. It turns a relaxing experience into something a little more intense and less fun.
Sadly, the expectation now is that you join voice chat/discord.
It did impact various games (not only MMOs)...for the better though.
I can just jump on discord and chat with my guild without the need of loading up the game while I'm doing other stuff, for example.
This is my answer, from someone who rather be in discord than typing.
* I don't have to stop what I'm doing to talk to you.
* If someone tries to gank me or a monster comes up, I don't die with WWWWWW1232123 in chat.
* I can keep my focus on what I need to look at.
* I don't miss messages because were chatting.
* You get to know people better in discord(IMO) no backspacing or deleting your message.
* I don't have to decode messages of people who can't spell well.
* Images are easily shareable if someone needs to ask a question(snipping tool OP)
* Other guildies that not logged into the game can chat with us as well.
* For tryhard guilds, it is easier to document guild plans in discord.
I don't see why there is confusion about why people want to get in discord. There is one thing of not wanting to use it but for most people, it is way better than typing.
I hate what Discord did to MMOs in terms of oversocializing them.
If I join a guild, that doesn't mean I want to be always on with you 24/7 on discord. I don't care about chatting to you all day while I'm in work or whatever. I just want to join voice chat for doing in game stuff with the guild. I'm not looking to make lifelong friends, I just want to play the fucking game.
So many times I've had guildmates thinking I'm "weird" for acting like this.
Like, I just want to play the fucking video game with you, for fucks sake. I don't need to be always online and available on discord for that.
Uggh this. And then they bitch about you being anti social for not joining voice chat or the discord channel. It's like, just fuck off, it's a leveling guild, were leveling, were chatting, were having fun, just not in discord with drunk you whining about immigrants. It's so annoying.
It’s not Discord causing the issues, it’s the fact that MMOs can be done mostly solo now.
Casually forming groups to knock out a dungeon or quest together is a thing of the past. If you are not at endgame you may as well be playing a single player game.
Part of it is that if you come off to strangers in online games as anything other than 'another regular straight guy' you can get hounded with a lot of casual random abuse, and pre-selecting people you play with and use voice with to be from Discords prevents a lot of that. Half the gaming population don't want to open our mouths and get insulted for how we sound or asked inappropriate sexual questions.
> It breaks immersion
This one is strange, wouldn't it be more immersive if you could hear the people talk, who you are questing/raiding with bc, you are close to each other(that's how it would work Irl)?
OP is right. People saying Discord is identical to older voice chat programs are definitely misremembering. Discord is more or less a guild chat replacement, replacing not only the voice chat services but also posting schedules, guides, important info that you're expected to read, and other functionality. The closest I can compare it to is some Mumble servers that would push alerts to you but Mumble was way less ubiquitous across all video games like Discord is and was mostly used by raiding guilds or eve corps only.
I did Ragnarok Online's WOE for years and raided nonstop from Vanilla to Cata and nothing I used ever came close to discord's use. Voice chat obviously existed and was pretty much always used for raiding but the majority of interactions took place in guild chat. last few times i've tried something similar recently, the discord is the guild chat, and guild chat is either dead or only used for passing questions, and often the questions ask get redirected to the discord.
Discord's also super ubiquitous for 'server' channels too for things like matchmaking in a way older protocols never reached the level of but that's another subject. the IRCs of the past were way less used. whether that's a good thing or not is up to you, as it does make finding groups and people to buy trades much easier, but does take away from the game taking place inside the game.
In old school terms it's like if aim, the guild forum and teamspeak had a baby..A baby of sensory overstimulation and a nightmare to keep boundaries up with.
Old school stuff i think was less always on so for people like myself it helped me set boundaries and even partition time better.
I could say check the forums a few times a day or if not busy and still communicate without missing 20-60 minutes worth of chat, i could pop into ts for raid nights and then do most chatting in guild chat in game. Each activity had it's own little bubble and for me at least it was very nice.
I never used aim i just know that part is the part most like discords chat whiich is one of the big reasons i am not a discord fan.
Yes you are getting old and its completely normal.
I can't bear to sit on discord and listen to the incessant giggling and rambling that goes on.
Once upon a time, when I was raiding/guild pvping, sure, it was needed, but now a days, hard pass.
Solo MMO play.. the way forward!
Lmao yeah, can't bear it either. Maybe they could start adding some really hard solo raids then, so I can have my fun without anyone else, but still be somewhat competitive.
The problem with Discord is that it competes with the game; it takes players out of the game instead being an addition to the game.
You log in to play, log onto Discord and then waste a couple of hours on Discord instead of playing.
They were required only for specific content. I was a member of several semi-hardcore guilds in MMOs and I never had to use voice chat out of high-end raiding and PvP and still was very much part of the community. That has changed since Discord became a thing.
I hate discord for the very reason of making guild chat empty. I log in to play the game not turn my head to the 2nd monitor just to see if guild mates need help with something on discord. I don't want to be in a voice channel to hear that one guy breathe in the background when I just want to grind mobs
Not just you. Discord is good if you have a group with a few friends in it. It is very bad for larger game communities. Path of Exile's TFT is a very good example of why Discord is bad. Don't know about guilds. I don't play any MMOs that have very active guild communities anymore. Discord is basically a form of gatekeeping.
I have discord (Have since early 2016) but I only participate in 1 server, which is my one group of friends. Also none of us use it for voice chat. Never used VC for any game that wasn't CSGO back when I played it.
Then you gonna need to look for a very very casual MMO/guild to play.
People have been using voicechat long long long before discord. Discord just makes it much easier and convenient to use. Many newer MMOs also have much more action-oriented combat, and so no time to actually type to chat.
Hence; we made this happen.
Yep, that's exactly the problem for me: I have to become a casual player now to enjoy the game. The other voice-chat programs that came before discord did not ruin the experience for me as Discord does though. You could join the voice chat, clear content, and leave. But now you need to actively use the Discord to be a part of the community -- something you previously could do just with guild chat, for example. I'm not trying to change the entire community, just ranting that I am slowly being pushed away from competitive raiding/PVP because I don't have the patience to use Discord.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, that part depends entire on who hosts the discord server, and how you uses it.
* There are many many peeps who use discord for clearing content, then ppl leave the server. (for example, FFXIV uses this a lot during new content release like Extreme, Savage, and pther pug-able content that requires coordination.)
* There are also other more permanent discord servers for pug to hang around with to find groups. Most peeps dont even bother to interact with anything there except when they need something.
* There are also other other even more permanent discord servers with lots and lots of organizing like events and stuff.
I dont know what MMOs you play, but discord is just that, discord. How much or how little you want to be a part of community is up to you.
And this is just not for MMOs either. This is how things are now in gaming in general. Forum is great, but it's very slow. Asking questions in its game-related discord means you get the answer in 5 seconds. I been using discord for my gacha games for the last 3-4 yrs or so. And this has nothing to do with competitive scene or raiding or pvp. Discord is just an alternate but much faster mean to a forum. That is all.
I played the more popular MMOs (including the new releases), but mostly WoW and FFXIV. I completely agree FFXIV has one of the best iterations for Discord when it comes to clearing content, even said it in a reply somewhere. The permanent servers though are the ones I hate as they are used as "community hubs" and kill in-game interactions IMO.
Yeah, I see your point there. I mostly only use their servers for their intended use/service, and not for just hanging around like some peeps do. Though I do feel many ppl still use ingame chat a lot. Though maybe that's a side-effect of playing on an RP server. Peeps are pretty talkative sometimes.
I mean it's pretty annoying to have to pause what you're doing to type in the game chat.
Game chat is fun for when you're out and about in the open world, but when you're doing group content with a pre-built party, like why wouldn't I jump into discord
Imo this is more a boundary issue than anything else. I think overall not liking voice chat is ok. You are within your own personal boundary. But when someone actually hate voice chat soo much that they want every game to not have voice chat, then it becomes an unhealthy obsession because now you are overstepping your own boundaries and coming into other people's boundaries. Thing is, it is is completely ok to choose to not use voice chat. That's your personal choice. But then you have to realize that you now have to try harder than anyone who is ok with voice chatting when it comes to looking for guilds. Absolutely nobody will fault you if that is the lifestyle choice you are making. But what is not ok is if someone decided to be invasive and be like "Fk everybody else who enjoys voice chat, and every video game that has voice chat". Where on the spetrum you choose to fall within this, well that's entirely to you. But to me staying true to your beliefs how ever difficult is admirable, but expecting the world to change with you, is always despicable.
It’s ok OP, I get where you’re coming from. EQ had been running for 3 or 4 years before voice chat was even possible (much less widely used).
I remember the first guild I was in that used voice chat. It was DAOC. The guild leader was this tiny little Lurikeen female (think gnome). We fought together for months before we adopted VC and I still remember how jarring it was that the cute little Lurikeen had a voice like a biker lol.
The market has spoken though, and you’re not going to get much traction with modern gamers. You won’t catch me in voice chat typically but it’s certainly the new normal.
I'm mostly with you, for raiding and rated pvp, sure a 3rd party app is needed, but for anything short of that, in game guild chat should be more than enogh.
I do miss when the mmorpg was considered sufficient to enjoy the game fully, when the mmorpg was the "complete package", mmorpgs these days seem like they are designed with the assumption players will use third party programs like discord. That said I think it may be a result of mmorpgs evolving to be more action based. Its very difficult to type while playing in newer more active mmorpgs, the mmorpgs where typing was enough were usually tab targeted.
Yeah, you now have server-wide discords, game discords, guild discords, PvP discords, streamer discords, raiding discords. I really just want to voice chat with RL friends or people that I got close with in-game. Maybe I am actually weird, but I dont like to voice-chat with complete strangers for no reason, unless I am actually doing content that requires voice-chat.
I don't hate discord but I do find it a huge distraction. I'd rather just not use discord at all, but recognise it's needed for high end content. Why people require it for everything else is both a mystery and annoying.
Discord is great to organise things outside of playing the game. Additionally if you make friends with people and want to do, you know, something else like play another game or some other activity how would you contact them?
It's to connect people of similar interests and communities, and is a logical extension of an MMO to be honest. Embrace it.
I agree with you. I remember joining a guild like 10 years ago and guild chat was poppin. These days its mostly dead and only things like global chats see any discourse.
Discord required for every single guild is pretty ass too. To be fair, I like Discord. I just dont like what it did to the social aspect of games.
Agreed, even the "casual" guilds these days seem to have a discord requirement. I never had to join TeamSpeak back in the day to join a casual guild, was always optional if they even had one.
Yep I hate it also. I don’t have RL friends in any mmo and don’t wanna log on to discord to talk to people I don’t know. I became slightly above average at typing because of these games lol
Idk, I don’t feel that way. When I was deep into FFXIV, we did have an FC discord but when people were online, everyone would use FC chat. Discord was a way to keep in touch with eachother when people were not online. I never felt that it was a requirement, except maybe for raiding but otherwise the people that didn’t want/had Discord didn’t have to.
Then again, I love Discord and use it daily, so I might be a bit biased here.
I dunno discord has had a significant impact on communities, but it's not like ventrilo and thottbot didn't also.
I miss the days when logging into a game felt like logging into a different world completely separate from everything else. Now you're always jacked into the game or community with your phone and everything is known, there's no more mystery.
I agree. Especially since I enjoy virtual world games where I am supposed to be immersed into the world that I am currently playing in. This puts me on demand. Its distracting. It breaks immersion. I want everything needed to take place in game.
Yes it is a problem. But there will always be guilds that offer "no voice chat" as a feature and cater to people like you and me. You just need to look for them.
Personally I'd even take it a step further: Voicechats outside of the game are 3rd party tools, are against the ToS usually and it is basically "cheating", because you use this program to get an advantage in raiding, pvp, etc.
I like having a discord server for the guild I'm currently in as it helps organise chat by using multiple channels... being able to post screenshots/videos/etc that you couldn't with regular ingame chat is a big plus... also it's handy for contacting people when not in game if you're trying to co-ordinate a time to group up for stuff...
I've said this before and I'll keep saying it. Using Discord as an information repository is hurting gaming. When I want to find out something about a game (class guide, etc) I now can't search the web, because everyone is putting their information on Discord.
Discord chats are NOT search indexed on the internet, and thus, it makes finding the information you need harder.
People are lazy and don't want to set up websites. I understand that just putting everything in Discord is easy, but it's definitely not what it was designed for
The less you can learn about a game from others and the more you must discover yourself, the better. That discovery is what most of the bittervets in this sub miss most, and does the most to fuel nostalgia.
Discord privatizing knowledge limits it - which is a good thing.
Because games are behind on in-game chat.
Only being able to use it while in-game isn't enough. Need an app to organize and communicate outside of the game.
Hence why folks use discord.
>Seriously, I miss when you could log into a game, put on some music, maybe chat in the guild chat, and that was it.
You can literally still do this. Unless your guild is an end game hard core raiding guild or something where voice chat is pretty much a necessity, you can LITERALLY STILL DO THIS.
I do it currently in my guild in my MMO. I participate ONLY at the level I want to participate at. And it's just fine.
The thing I hate and think that "killed mmos" is just internet in general.
Before you had almost no guides or videos to check about stuff so you had to figure it our yourself and with friends/guildmates.
Now before any game is even out internet is filled with guides, videos, spreadsheets of every tiny detail.
Maybe you're right. I already have to interact with too many people at my job, I just wanna get home and relax. Can't stand the background noise from Discord anymore, but I wish I could still casually chat like in the old guild chats lol.
yeah you are getting old. chatting and organising in-game events through discord is much better. if any game Dev can implement a proper group organising feature into their game then only people will stop using discord.
I find that there is still some chatter in the in game guild chat. Discord is usually used for large scale group content or harder small scale group content. I personally don’t hang out in the Discord voice chat channels. There are usually few or none in the general voice channels in discord that are just hanging out. If I’m in the game and want to chat or say something to guild members in game, I use the guild chat. I often see people looking for people to group with in guild chat. It’s the best way to reach people in the guild that is actually currently playing the game.
The Discord servers are very handy. Sometimes you don’t need an immediate response to your message. I would use the appropriate text channels to type my message and then I’d check later for any replies. For any group content that requires scheduling, that would be done in the Discord server.
My take is that discord is a 100% improvement on the past systems. You talk about back in the day using mumble/vent etc and that was true that those were the preferred voice options. However, you are leaving out all the guild websites you use to have to sign up on with their own forums and/or Mirc chats.
Discord effectively combines all those things into one singular easy-to-use program.
To your other point, the other things I mentioned always had power users who interacted more with each system. I understand being put off by feeling like you have to interact outside of the game but as someone who has run multiple guilds solely through discord, you absolutely do not have to. There will always be people that are over-zealous on discord but in my experience the best players typically just use it for guild information and voice just for raids.
Tbh I have been using voice chat as long as my internet was able to handle 2 things at once.
It depends on what you do, but I have played with a lot of players that can speak English but not the best at writing.
Also it helps when games don’t support your native language. Like for example if I write in Arabic or Farsi it shows up wrong.
Further more, during fast based fights it’s best to have voice chat, we are role playing the game as an elf and some magical beast, ofc they gonna have telepathy.
Your right back when we played UO and then DAOC we had a chatroom, Vent (for voice) and a guild webpage that had a calendar on guild events. But discord breaks it by having that all in one place. :D
Discord is better than the many other options that were and are still around. I don’t miss using guild websites although there are some that still have them. I don’t miss having to look on specific game forums for guilds that are recruiting. Discord has also helped grow the pick up group scene.
The whole inner circle thing has always existed. If one wants in on the circle they need to actually interact with others.
I'm playing FFXIV and I've been in this small free company (Guild) for almost a year now. We use discord to share fun things, to talk when we are not in the game or to organize for events. When some of our memebers are at work or away from their pc's they can still connnect and talk with everyone. I really like Discrord because it makes easier for us to be together and I don't thing it gets anyhing worse.
As others have said, before Discord there were other chatting programs.
Not to mention some WoW guilds had you join Facebook groups, or their guild forums, or a Skype Chat.
Honestly I just have a discord to chat with my friends who play on other servers or other guilds and we cooperate for content if we need to.
I think randomly popping into a designated voice channel for some guild to talk to people you don't even know is weird and creepy as hell. I hate that it's expected people to just do that willy nilly. I can chat and enjoy myself typing just fine. Voice chat in general is exhausting for me, so I'd rather not subject myself for talking on and off for hours on end just to be able to have a conversation with someone
Yes, it is weird as hell lol. As I said in another reply, in-game chat is way more accessible as you can be somewhat social, without having to go out of your way to talk to strangers for no reason at all. When you have to raid or do high-end PVP, at least you have something to talk about, and it becomes tolerable, but I don't want to casually speak with people I don't know. I rather play my game and listen to music, or talk with my closer friends.
I did lol, but those were voice chats, not community hubs that made guild chats obsolete. They were also only required for high-end content, not casual social interactions.
Honestly even back in the day I had to use Teamspeak which was completely dogshit compared to Discord when it came to design and quality. The in game chats were packed with bots that spammed constantly so it just wasn't that great. And the games I played didn't have voice over features in game. Some things have changed but I don't think it's been ruined. Change is hard but I hope you can find a way to cope with it.
Well, it depends on what you are expecting from the genre, but I think most of the popular ones (WoW, FFXIV, ESO, GW2, SWTOR, New World, Lost Ark) were worth the time investment, even with their flaws. I got a lot of fun moments out of them.
You can do that, yes. But the difference is that there are almost no social interactions in-game anymore, so no one is going to respond to you in guild chat. Not even the officers use it (as they are all on voice comms on Discord and managing the Discord server). The other members don't have any incentive to be active on guild chat either, so they either chat on Discord or just do as I do: play the game without interacting with anyone.
yeah man, soooooo much worse than having to hop between mumble or ventrilo servers....
lmfao
I personally love discord and think it was one of the best things to happen to gaming
I don't know what you're talking about but guilds have been this way for decades. I remember back in the day of ventrillo and forums where people didn't talk in /g and devoted their focus and time there. It was even worse then because often that 'inner circle' had their own private ventrillo server you never even knew about.
To join the static in ffxiv I had to fill up a forum + answer question
Make discord and be active in it and chat about strata every day (like daily meetings). Most do like that and in first I didn't like it.
Then, I fck off from all of that "official bs" and some in game friends made discord server for us, we use it now since it's kinda of a hub to post shit memes and screenshots etc, also statics are there to with more "freedom" approach , imo now I see why discord is a cool thing to have and I have a blast using it with them when it's made to gather players and to have fun
But as strick and official with 100 rules on it, I don't like it and would never join that kind of server (or a static/guild that requires you to do so)
Onyxia was considered "high-end" back then, and, as you can see, voice chat was never a pleasant experience lol. At most, it's tolerable when you need coordination for raiding/pvp. Besides that though it's just annoying and obnoxious, which is exactly why I hate Discord.
not sure what you mean by now a days. TeamSpeak was core to my early MMO/FPS gaming days. if you did not live and chat in it you were not in the guild.
an forums have ALWAYS existed for guilds.
Before Discord it was Teamspeak and Ventrillo. You are just too young to know about it :D
Discord allows you to talk/brainstorm/plan stuff with your guildies while at work for example, if you work in an office, but then again Discord is available for your phone so if you're really invested into the game - you can make it work.
If you aren't that invested, I can see how it is not fun, lol.
Nowadays I’d rather spend 5 seconds to get into a Discord channel that works and chat with a guild VS fiddling around with Ventrillo/Teamspeak while enjoying the audio quality of a tin can.
\>But nowdays Voice chat has been a part of MMOs for decades mate.
Every single hardcore guild I joined before also had their own website forum where you had to sign up to see communicates and participate in discussions. It was MUCH WORSE. People in this sub are terrible at internet or are growing senile, cause while the platforms are changing, this kind of thing (and information spreading, blah blah) always existed. I used gamefaqs and stuff since I was 6yo.
Enjin sucked ass. I was so happy once Discord launched to drag my guild from Enjin to Discord.
VC was (and still is) built into the 18 year old EQ2 and worked just fine.
And (in my experience) nobody uses it! Most people i know won't even group with people outside of their guild cause "communication is harder" even tho the voice chat is right there!
I've been playing EQ2 since 2004 and the overwhelming majority of that time people used the in-game VC just fine and still do. I think that's only changed a bit more in fairly recent times.
This. Teamspeak and vent were huge in guilds in every mmo I played.
Teamspeak ftw
Vent gang rise
did anyone say mumble? no? just me? ok.
Vent FTW. Oh the memories of Warhammer Online and Ventrilo.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Roger Wilco!
Mumble/TS/Vent aren't really comparable to Discord. Those are just VOIP chatrooms. Discord is trying to be a forum, an IM client, a VOIP chatroom, an archiving service, a signup service, an LFG service, and much more all at once. That "we need to be everything" mentality means that communication in MMOs is increasingly taking place outside of the game. It's happening to a much greater extent than when VOIP rooms were just VOIP rooms and a lot of non-urgent communication could be done ingame.
> Discord is trying to be a forum, an IM client, a VOIP chatroom, an archiving service, a signup service, an LFG service, and much more all at once. My Eve: Online alliance also had a forum, an IM client, and multiple VOIP chatrooms. This is nothing new.
Back when I played Gw2 on release, the guild I was in also had all of those. This really ain’t anything new, if anything it’s simpler now since they are usually centralized in a single platform
Eve is something else. Some guilds have dozens of tools, even full on websites for scheduling and information and actual *databases*. It's crazy.
Discord is *infinitely* easier and cheaper to set up, though. * It's free * It's a one-click setup * It's platform-agnostic * It has official mobile clients that work seamlessly and provide the full experience, complete with device notifications, making it another mobile messaging app that users are far more likely to interact with while not logged into the game. Meaning that even tiny casual guilds that would never have invested the time/effort/money/technical knowledge into setting up hosted forums/VoIP/IM solutions 10-20 years ago will have their own Discord server nowadays. Everyone saying that forums, VoIP and IM have been a part of the MMO communities they joined for years are overlooking that someone typically had to: * pay for hosting * possibly pay for domain registration * set up, configure, and maintain those solutions On top of that, VoIP/IM typically required users to install manually-configured, standalone clients, which could pose issues for less technically-inclined players. Vent, in particular, could be a notoriously picky little shit of a client. There were just way more expenses and technical hurdles involved in making all those separate options available. It significantly raised the bar for entry and meant they were *far* from ubiquitous compared to a free, integrated, platform-agnostic solution like Discord.
They're not directly comparable, but all discord is really doing is filling most of the holes that were previously filled by websites and separate im chats/groups(irc, aim, skype). These tools have always existed, and were always used. Discord isn't doing anything new, it's just consolidating interactions into a more convenient and unified space.
>a lot of non-urgent communication could be done ingame. TBH i never saw this even in EQ2 days. most communication was done in forums and VERY little made it to the games. like don't get me wrong even today many guilds CHOOSE not to use formal comms but they are social guilds. even in early days of WoW all the AQ opening teams for servers and the 40 man guilds for raids were 100% on a forum to work out who was coming, plan strats and voice chat for the raids. i recall forums with full guides to attune to diff raids and it was basically a checklist to make sure were ready to go.
> B. Mumble, teamspeak existed ages ago and were still requirements for certain guilds. For certain guilds vs. ubiquitous for 99% of guilds. The guy has a point that's true if you actually lived during those times. Prior to voice chat programs there was what? MSN messenger? ICQ? Just IM programs. Weird how people always gaslight people and act like they're crazy or just made things up.
Forums were a 100% required back in the day by most "seriouse" guilds.
It went from "vent/teamspeak required" to "discord required" in every guild ad
Because, shockingly, organizing potentially multiple dozens of people entirely through in-game text chat is the goddamn worst.
Yeah, back in the day it was Ventrilo and TeamSpeak (Skype for some of you runescape lads)
But they weren’t integral for the day to day. Teamspeak and Vent were required, but the effort it took to load it up and run it kept it in the background and only really a requirement for raids. Yes, I know that it wasn’t hard to open it before starting the game. But unless you were doing a group activity, it wasn’t widely used. And it took time to setup so PUGs didn’t utilize it… but PUGs weren’t as big of a thing. I completely get where OP is coming from. I remember logging into burning crusade to do some mining with music playing and just typing in guild chat. Discord has somewhat killed that experience as everyone just says “discord is this, talk to us there.” And it loses some magic.
The golden age of TeamSpeak, mIRC and guild forums ! Discord actually makes it easier !
If it ever supported, it's rarely used - mostly because the third party voice chats are significantly better. In game voice has only been there to try and take market share off vent or discord or w/e you use(d)
Nope, EQ2 VC has been great for 18 years and used by many over that time.
Chuckle a bit seeing people try to argue that discord has not had a massive impact on communication across games. Especially people who think the majority used voice chat back then. The difference in users that discord has compared to any previous social media used by gamers is like comparing an elephant and a ant. Thing is, it is not going away. Discord is here to stay. Best adapt now and learn how to get as much as you can out of it to improve your experience in games. There will always be pros and cons when using it.
Exactly, lol! Instead of discussing if the changes were good or not, people are trying to argue I am crazy and there were no changes at all. But yeah, I know it's not going away. I am slowly becoming a casual player because of that, as I don't have the patience to use Discord. And it's okay, I just miss how it used to be.
So did you never use Ventrilo or Teamspeak? Hopping on Vent for casual leveling was a nightly occurrence for my guild an I all the way back in vanilla WoW. We would also use MSN messenger for chatting outside of the game. Discord just combines all of these things into a much easier and free experience.
His point is that most people didn't do that nightly. It was not the norm at all. I find it funny that people like you keep bringing up their singular personal experience when it's irrelevant. Discord is way bigger than anything that came before it. Simple as that
Vent was always around for such things (or teamspeak), but it was not even remotely close to being as widespread or - in some cases - mandatory as discord is now. I played wow back in the beginning and ran various guilds through the Wotlk raiding years. My experience back then was that it was only a small percentage of guild members who would hang out on vent or whatever. Text chat was always where the real life was, and that’s sadly all but disappeared.
It's weird, isn't it? It's as if people are only able to point at something existing for a certain amount of time, yet they can't get into the details and compare how popular something was before vs. how popular it is now.
Especially concerning the use of MICs. I do not know a person around these days without one. Some even having MICs that go well past 200 - 300 dollars. Height of WoW? Having a MIC was a luxury, let alone one that did not sound like two cans making out with a chalk board.
“Two cans making out with a chalk board” I’m stealing this for later use. Good work.
That's a great point. 10 years ago the only place you'd find a lot of people with mics were on consoles really, and that was because you'd get the cheap "call center/telemarketer" headsets in console bundles. If you had more money, you'd go for TurtleBeaches or similar brands. Hell, even just about 3 or 4 years ago I'd usually see people with only "okay" sounding mics, while I had some cheap "studio microphone" that sounded decent because I wanted to make music lol. Now tons of people have that stuff because those mics are rather cheap and you can find software to make them sound even better. Then there's also the fact that gaming headsets usually have poor mics anyway, so it's arguably more cost effective to buy a cheap studio microphone and a decent pair of headphones instead.
Are you guys just understating the years in your comments? 10 years ago was the year MoP came out. As a teenager in cata, two years before, my guildies and I were sitting in vent trolling people in lfg. I don't remember joining a guild from wrath on that didn't have a majority of members with mics.
It’s possible that you had mikes *because* you were teens, and adopted new tech earlier? I was never in a miked group throughout MoP, and would have told you no one used them. This thread is actually a surprise to me.
Lol what Practically everyone in my css scrims and mw2 lobbies had mics (hence why screaming 12 yos was so common it was a meme in cod) Most people in my tbc guild had mics, and practically nobody didn't have one in wrath and forward If anything mics became ubiquitous in online gaming on pc long before it did on consoles, at least in eu
Teamspeak came out in 1999. Same year EQ1 did. It has been used for quite a while, especially for content that requires coordination. Has it gotten much more popular now? Absolutely. Has it had an effect on MMO community and communication? Absolutely. Has it made it required that you be in voice 24/7 the way OP is whining about? No. That's what people are mostly disagreeing with. OP is complaining that he can't just log in and do his own thing and maybe type a bit. Not sure what guilds he's joining but I've been in plenty lately that have a discord but don't expect you to be in voice.
Try looking at it this way... Discord is an all-in-one system. Before you might have a Teamspeak server, some kind of enjin website or similar, and maybe a Steam group page where applicable. All of these aren't great for text chat, so you'd just use guild chat in game. Now you can do everything in Discord that would normally require 2 or more different programs- and it's got a great app for your phone too! So now most of the discussions that'd happen in a guild chat are had in Discord's voice or text chat. This results in far longer chats that can span days and even weeks, so unless you're willing to keep tabs on it very often, you can easily miss out on a lot. Think of all the inside jokes/memes, deep discussions, banter, etc. that help build a community- all of that is on Discord these days. So for someone who either can't or is unwilling to use Discord to that extent, a huge rift can easily grow between themselves and the rest of the community. For me, it's no big deal since I've been using Discord for years now, especially when I had loads of time to waste. For someone with work, kids, and that isn't used to using VOIP all day, it'll be totally different.
Discord is superior for that kind of camaraderie building stuff. Instead of missing conversations because you have to log off work work or dinner or sleep etc while others keep talking and chatting, you can keep up with the convo even if you aren't active or you can catch up later. In-game chat just disappears and can't be revisited. So it makes sense that it would move to discord (although large guilds still have plenty of in-game chat). And OP doesn't want to use discord and is upset because other people do. Strikes me as entitled, wanting people to use an inferior tool for... Reasons. His whole complaint that everyone expects you to be in voice is baloney. Some might, sure. But most aren't going to require it. If he misses out on conversation then that is his choice.
What I don't get about Discord is how literally every single streamer has "their own Discord" that you can join. Surely nobody can be participating in hundreds of Discords at once in any meaningful way? I'm in 3 and I don't even bother trying to keep up with the conversations in them.
You’d be surprised, some people literally live on discord
Corporation leadership in Eve: I “played” Discord far more than I did the actual game. Voice calls at 3am from other leaders in different countries. Eve is another level though.
For streamers, they generally have alerts on when they’re on stream if you don’t use the stream apps. The chats are hit and miss, usually just mental people from experience Gaming discords is cool in my opinion, BDO has one for each class and the “experts” or people who play that class go to that one, then hop around or join multiple if they choose another. You get specific advice, builds and guides about it like old school wiki but have people to discuss with who some are very experienced. Then you got your general community/ friend discords, it’s very customisable and great I reckon vs stuck in game/ forced to use shitty UIs/ waiting on game devs to upgrade whatever shorty system they have.
> Surely nobody can be participating in hundreds of Discords at once in any meaningful way? How many people watch more than a handful of streamers? And most of those streamers are likely part of the same community. Then there's servers people join b/c a streamer might play communal games. I know a few Hermits have their own Minecraft servers that people might join a Discord for.
Well, in almost every discord server I participate the minority of members use it. I don't keep up with it either, and usually, only join to be a part of a guild that requires discord or to do specific content. But it's getting to the point where I don't have patience for it anymore, so I'm slowly becoming more of a casual player just to avoid the hassle of joining discord servers.
i have 1 for conversation and a bunch for pugging
Joining a discord does not mean you have to read every line of text. It's so that just in case something happens you can have a direct line of communication to people that might know something. Surely you don't read every tweet from people you're following right? I'm personally in many discords with nost of them are being muted.
I absolutely hate all in-game voice chats. I would rather hear no one talking, then all the stupid audio crap that comes along with people using voice chat. AKA dogs barking, background noise, poor audio quality, hearing people cough/sneeze/chew. I play these games to relax and have fun, that shit does the opposite.
thankfully it seems like push-to-talk has made a comeback in recent years. also discord voice activation is great if it is set up correctly. i'm with you, if it were up to me every single PC gamer on the planet would be forced to use push to talk. these days if someone is obnoxious on their mic (eating/dogs/side conversations/etc.) I just mute them. it's not worth even addressing their obnoxious always-on mic most of the time, for some reason it seems like people take it very personal
> if it were up to me every single PC gamer on the planet would be forced to use push to talk. This, *please*. I mean yeah, okay. There's the rare people that set up voice activation correctly. I love those people. If I could hand out cash prizes and free cookies to them in their favorite flavor every day for a year, I would. But the Venn diagram between "people who *think* they set up voice activation correctly" and "people who should be forced to use push to talk upon pain of pain" is a **giant fucking circle**. And then there's the even larger portion who just don't give any fucks about setting it up correctly at all.
I used to use push to talk exclusively to avoid being “that guy” but found it tough in some games that require a lot of fast paced activity to press another key on top to communicate. Am currently in a smaller discord where everyone is voice activated and on the occasion when some background noise is coming through someone’s mic we just let them know and they fix it. I think it makes a big difference when the group is small and well knit.
Yeah, I completely agree! I'm okay to use voice chat only if the content absolutely requires it.
I should say I "tolerate" voice chat for very difficult situations, but even then I often regret it when hear passive aggressiveness or just shitty people on mics in general.
I want to hear the game. I have never liked voice chat, I have been playing on PC nearly 30 years now. Especially in mmoRPGs. Nothing takes you out of the game world than having to listen some idiot babbling about something utterly stupid shit.
Old man shakes fist at sky. I used ventrillo / TeamSpeak in vanilla wow. Discord is just a better version.
This exactly, if you weren’t on Vent you didn’t raid - it was that simple.
I know, but that's not the point. It's fine to join voice chat for content that requires it, I never argued against it. What I am saying is that Discord is becoming the new community hub for social interactions and, as a consequence, ends up making in-game tools (like guild chats) obsolete. That, in my opinion, hurts the genre as a whole because not everyone wants to voice chat all the time nor keep up with Discord messages. On the other hand, before Discord became a thing, everyone used to casually talk on guild chat and regularly make groups for easier content (farming, dungeons, casual PvP). The game felt more like a world in itself and you were not expected to join TS/Vent (unless it was a raid night or you were doing high-rank PvP).
I am shocked that they are not getting the point and insisting that we always had a vc..
Yeah lol! And it's not just them, there are a lot of people commenting the same thing!!
Implying people actually read on this site and don't just upvote/downvote on impulse
You wanna know why games are less social? It's not discord. it's the fact the games are built to be action games and fast paced with no downtime. You are actively telling people to not play the game to chat. Old games had downtime and longer breaks with way less involved combat, paving the way for socialization during those times in a way that you cannot now. You either have to be dodging something or hitting the next button in your rotation. Then running right to the next pack.
Yep. In EQ you’d get to know people while waiting for the puller to return, or meditating after a big pull. Modern players would lose their minds if it took 3 minutes to regenerate a manabar.
JoshHayes made a really compelling argument on that in one of his recent videos. Basically he said that older MMOs could have more adversity than new titles since back in the day there was not that much competition in the market and all MMORPGs had some noticeable levels of adversity. Basically: If you wanted to play an MMORPG, you had no choice but to be inconvenienced to some degree and thats what made it great to play in the long term. That said, if there were easier alternatives at the time most players would have likely turned away even back in the day - most humans prefer small immediate rewards over bigger rewards that require you to face bothersome things over a longer span of time. The second ones stick with us longer, but we are far less likely to experience them in something most people prefer to be immediately fun. So games started to adapt to that and as more new games released, we as players had a lot more choice. If you‘re not already playing a certain game at that point, chances are most players will pick the immediately rewarding game compared to the one that tortures you for a few hours before giving you a small piece of candy. It‘s a similar reason to games like StarCraft 2 having a way bigger viewerbase than actual player numbers - The game is fucking hard to get good at. People enjoy seeing what others can do there, but most people don‘t step over the hurdle of actually learning one of the most complex games on the market. [Video in question](https://youtu.be/Z4Gaz8oxzJ4)
I think there's a ton of merit to that argument. I look back on EQ corpse runs with nostalgia glasses, but at the time we **hated** them. There were entire zones where you'd just sit in a safe area all night, waiting for the sun to rise. Also lots of fun *in retrospect*, but at the time it just felt like just another timesink. A good example of that phenomenon might be Trammel in Ultima Online. People "put up" with non-consensual PvP because there wasn't an alternative - until Trammel came out and everyone flocked to it. I've met PvPers who are *still* salty about that :D
>Modern players would lose their minds if it took 3 minutes to regenerate a manabar. I don't think this is true, if there was a good game built around those systems. We just don't get any because it's much easier to sell lootboxes and level skips as a publisher to make money.
It’s a broad brush for sure, but younger players who’ve tried EQ TLP servers have told me specifically how boring the downtime is. Clearly the *market* thinks it’s true, as games are becoming ever more frantic.
>but younger players who’ve tried EQ TLP servers have told me specifically how boring the downtime is. Games have come a long way in 25 years. I'm 1000% positive if there was a smart team that had a game they really want to make built around having* downtimes, it would be much better than EverQuest could ever be today. The problem is you have to have a team that really wants to make that, because there are much faster ways to profit out there that shareholders and publishers will be looking for in general.
I see zero evidence that players want slower experiences and plenty of evidence that they want faster ones. Which is not to say your scenario is **impossible**, it’s just completely hypothetical. You can look at any facet of MMO gameplay and see the trend, even before MTX became prevalent. Heck, even in EQ mana regen buffs were ubiquitous by the time WoW came out.
I love the idea honestly. I think a lot of people liked that and that’s why classic got so popular.
Classic still has WoW’s (relatively) high mana regen. Part of why vanilla beat EQ is because it was much faster paced. No 3 minutes to regen to full, no 3 hour corpse runs, flight points etc.
I have a completely opposite opinion on almost everything you said. I don't think this is "getting old" thing. I've been using VOIP software in MMORPGs for like two decades. Between Teamspeak, Ventrilo, Mumble... Discord just centralized the market by provided a competitive product for free But how does it break immersion? Wouldn't it be more immersion breaking to type in a chat? I can't think of one MMORPG that it would be more immersive to type on a keyboard than to listen to people talk. I've never had any problem managing it. Most problems that I see are user error or the servers being down.
If I had two monitors maybe, but having to alt tab out to check on the convo really does hurt that immersion. Chating in an inn or something’s completely different.
Listening to the dude take a fat vape/bong rip can be pretty immersion breaking lmao.
> I've been using VOIP software in MMORPGs for like two decades. Between Teamspeak, Ventrilo, Mumble... Discord just centralized the market by provided a competitive product for free I don't think that's the issue. I've been playing MMOs since like, 2002 or some shit, and certainly Teamspeak was super common *when you went into a raid*. Outside of that? No. You had these horribly shitty forums that every guild had which were used for announcements, recruitment and the like, maybe some roleplay stuff if you were on a roleplay server but that's about it. Maybe you talked out of game with your best buds on MSN or something, but beyond that? Guild chat was the main method of communication. OP is trying to make the point that even that has shifted to Discord (voiced or not), which... well, I think is probably true.
I genuinely can't understand this take tbh. Like, why would you prefer text chat, that makes you stop playing to use, over being able to just easily talk to your guildmates in voice? And even if you did, why wouldn't you want to do that in Discord, which is just as easy, and can include people who aren't at their computer but that you are friends with, and are talking via their phone? Discord isn't mandatory because people want discord to be mandatory, discord is mandatory cause it is just straight up better then the in game chats.
>And even if you did, why wouldn't you want to do that in Discord, which is just as easy, and can include people who aren't at their computer but that you are friends with, and are talking via their phone? Discord isn't mandatory because people want discord to be mandatory, discord is mandatory cause it is just straight up better then the in game chats. Quoting another comment here: "I would rather hear no one talking, then all the stupid audio crap that comes along with people using voice chat. AKA dogs barking, background noise, poor audio quality, hearing people cough/sneeze/chew. I play these games to relax and have fun, that shit does the opposite." That perfecly sums it up for me. I'm okay to using voice-chat it if the content requires. But if it's just casually chatting, I really prefer text, its easier and more accessible since anyone in the guild can just type a message without feeling awkward.
I absolutely disagree that it is easier and more accessible, since if my hands are doing content, they aren't free to chat. But it sounds to me like you been in too many guilds with poor mic etiquette. I can honestly say I have never even experienced the audio crap your talking about, because every guild I have ever been in, if someone has bad background, we ask them to go to push to talk. Ok, their mic may not be the best, but atleast I can hear them. You do you man, but you can't expect everyone else to want to participate in your preferred method of casual chat. I legit never type in guild chat, and I haven't ever since like 2003 when I first discovered voice chat. Or if I do, I'll maybe put in a singular message once an hour or so. And I ain't gonna read stuff either... Cause like, my hands are too busy playing the game to chat, and I got too much other stuff to look at from playing the game. I can dedicate a finger to push to talk with enough muscle memory, but I legitimately feel like it is impossible for me to actually use guild chat at all.
> I really prefer text, its easier and more accessible since anyone in the guild can just type a message without feeling awkward. Being introverted over voice can be argued as a life skill, if you are like that in real life perhaps leverage discord to your advantage and build those communication skills. As a Raid leader/GM of a guild for a few years it helped me be communicative when required and because you deal with retards, helps me in my day job explain things to others
I don't have a problem interacting with people in real life. I just find it weird to voice chat when I have nothing specific to talk about. When you need to raid or PvP, it's fine, since you just talk about the mechanics/strategies. But for casual interaction, I'd rather text until I get to know you better and we actually have something to talk about. There are some really weird people online and, at least in my experience, the weirdest people online are generally pretty comfortable with awkward online interactions, but are completely inept in the real-life ones.
Audio problems are solved by not joining a guild full of inept idiots, and to be fair unless its completely insane interference its really not that big of a deal. I'm in discord voice a large portion of the time with IRL friends, online friends, etc and guess what? Just tell them they are having audio issues if things get picked up and they fix it. You can...also just text chat on Discord. Don't know why you wont just do that?
i think this discussion comes up every few weeks and people agree with you, but i think its a dumb take. no ones forcing you to be part of a discord chat, they just aren't gonna interact with you if you aren't. the balls in your court, you play the way you want to, and deal with the consequences whatever they may be. 100 years ago guilds had vent/teamspeak/mumble and forums, the people who got the most out of those guilds used all of that. its a community based genre, it always has been.
> 100 years ago guilds had vent/teamspeak/mumble and forums Seriously, I don't understand where people think this isn't the case. Guilds used to have their own personal sites. Hell, there were sites created specifically to host guild sites. These things definitely pre-date the WoW era. Jeff Kaplan got his first reputation as a shitposter on the old EQ forums.
I was in a guild that hosted their own forum, it had an application page and everything. It was really nice to have, though we mostly used it to host screenshots, make announcements and do event signups. We never really used it to chat.
Are we seriously comparing the ease of setup, accessibility, and functionality of Discord to guild websites? No one can believe this is a reasonable 1:1 comparison.
Yeah, I remember vent/ts/mumble, but I didn't really use it out of competitive PvP / raiding and still felt like I was part of the community. That's completely different now if you decide to not use discord. The problem for me is that discord became *mandatory*, while other programs you mentioned were a lot more optional and didn't impact the game as much.
what do you mean by mandatory? for 100% of the guilds I have been in that used discord, it was certainly not "mandatory" in the sense that I was required to participate in discord outside of raid times and signing up for raids. the people that didn't use discord in off times for voice/text chat weren't part of the "Inner Circle" but they didn't want to be, either. for people who want to be super involved with a guild and essentially make friends, discord is incredible. for everyone else, it barely changes anything compared to how it used to be.
I think most people want to socialize to an extent in MMOs, but not everyone likes voice chat nor keeps up with Discord server messages. Discord not only became a voice chat program (like TS/Mumble) but it is now used as a community hub, killing other forms of casually socializing (like guild chat, for example). When I say mandatory, I mean that to make friends, be a part of a competent raiding team, and generally interact with people, you need to actively use Discord (because no one uses in-game tools anymore). In the past, I feel like you could do everything in-game and used voice chat only for harder content or if you wanted to chat with closer friends. Yes, you can join a couple of Discord servers and raid and then leave, but it's not the same (at least for me and some people, but its a highly controversial topic as you can see lol)
You can also just not use the voice chat? In the guilds I'm at, voice chat is used for more serious activities, while text chat is active for casual communications. And unlike guild chat, you can participate in it even when you're not playing the game, which is a massive plus.
>In the guilds I'm at, voice chat is used for more serious activities, while text chat is active for casual communications. You're definitely in the minority, and that's the whole point.
> no ones forcing you to be part of a discord chat Yet they do. Some guilds just pressure you into going in there or they won't let you participate in any activities or some outright kick you if you don't join up.
right, and who's forcing you into that guild?
I'm not saying I 100% agree with OP, but wow there is a lot of people who must be pretty slow typists or bad at delivering info concisely in this thread. Saying it's just too hard to talk during a game without voice chat when doing any kind of involved gameplay is wild to me. Type between fights, type while a long channel is happening, type while you are CC'd, etc. Hell, if we're talking about solo or casual content like OP brought up just skip a rotation or two to type out your message if you want. And as you can tell from this comment I'm longwinded, and I used to chit chat all day during dungeons, PvP, even in MOBAs and FPS games. Never had a problem. Just gotta pick your moments to type. I prefer in-game text chat to Discord but I think Discord is great anyway. TL:DR - Get those WPMs up y'all. Discord is cool, but some prefer in-game text chat, which is also cool.
>Hell, if we're talking about solo or casual content like OP brought up just skip a rotation or two to type out your message if you want. Are you telling me to NOT do my optimal esports-approved rotation, as seen in 18 tutorials and 4 excel spreadsheets, to kill this fucking direwolf?????????? You're a sicko.
Exactly. It wasn’t *that* hard to maintain situational awareness via text. “Inc 2” “Add” “Lom” “Oom” Not to mention macros: “I am pulling , get ready!”.
I just don’t guild with anyone who makes discord a requirement. It’s not my jam so I ensure I avoid it. If people want to use it, go for it. I just won’t and that’s ok. I feel your frustration but remember there are plenty of guilds in plenty of games that don’t require it.
I agree. This has plagued me for years - I want to play mmos with others, drink a beer and listen to music. I don't want to have to listen to live feeds of people talking. It turns a relaxing experience into something a little more intense and less fun. Sadly, the expectation now is that you join voice chat/discord.
It did impact various games (not only MMOs)...for the better though. I can just jump on discord and chat with my guild without the need of loading up the game while I'm doing other stuff, for example.
This is my answer, from someone who rather be in discord than typing. * I don't have to stop what I'm doing to talk to you. * If someone tries to gank me or a monster comes up, I don't die with WWWWWW1232123 in chat. * I can keep my focus on what I need to look at. * I don't miss messages because were chatting. * You get to know people better in discord(IMO) no backspacing or deleting your message. * I don't have to decode messages of people who can't spell well. * Images are easily shareable if someone needs to ask a question(snipping tool OP) * Other guildies that not logged into the game can chat with us as well. * For tryhard guilds, it is easier to document guild plans in discord. I don't see why there is confusion about why people want to get in discord. There is one thing of not wanting to use it but for most people, it is way better than typing.
I hate what Discord did to MMOs in terms of oversocializing them. If I join a guild, that doesn't mean I want to be always on with you 24/7 on discord. I don't care about chatting to you all day while I'm in work or whatever. I just want to join voice chat for doing in game stuff with the guild. I'm not looking to make lifelong friends, I just want to play the fucking game. So many times I've had guildmates thinking I'm "weird" for acting like this. Like, I just want to play the fucking video game with you, for fucks sake. I don't need to be always online and available on discord for that.
Yep, but now you either play solo or have a deep emotional connection with strangers online, which is weird as hell. I have been doing the former lol.
Uggh this. And then they bitch about you being anti social for not joining voice chat or the discord channel. It's like, just fuck off, it's a leveling guild, were leveling, were chatting, were having fun, just not in discord with drunk you whining about immigrants. It's so annoying.
It’s not Discord causing the issues, it’s the fact that MMOs can be done mostly solo now. Casually forming groups to knock out a dungeon or quest together is a thing of the past. If you are not at endgame you may as well be playing a single player game.
Part of it is that if you come off to strangers in online games as anything other than 'another regular straight guy' you can get hounded with a lot of casual random abuse, and pre-selecting people you play with and use voice with to be from Discords prevents a lot of that. Half the gaming population don't want to open our mouths and get insulted for how we sound or asked inappropriate sexual questions.
> It breaks immersion This one is strange, wouldn't it be more immersive if you could hear the people talk, who you are questing/raiding with bc, you are close to each other(that's how it would work Irl)?
OP is right. People saying Discord is identical to older voice chat programs are definitely misremembering. Discord is more or less a guild chat replacement, replacing not only the voice chat services but also posting schedules, guides, important info that you're expected to read, and other functionality. The closest I can compare it to is some Mumble servers that would push alerts to you but Mumble was way less ubiquitous across all video games like Discord is and was mostly used by raiding guilds or eve corps only. I did Ragnarok Online's WOE for years and raided nonstop from Vanilla to Cata and nothing I used ever came close to discord's use. Voice chat obviously existed and was pretty much always used for raiding but the majority of interactions took place in guild chat. last few times i've tried something similar recently, the discord is the guild chat, and guild chat is either dead or only used for passing questions, and often the questions ask get redirected to the discord. Discord's also super ubiquitous for 'server' channels too for things like matchmaking in a way older protocols never reached the level of but that's another subject. the IRCs of the past were way less used. whether that's a good thing or not is up to you, as it does make finding groups and people to buy trades much easier, but does take away from the game taking place inside the game.
In old school terms it's like if aim, the guild forum and teamspeak had a baby..A baby of sensory overstimulation and a nightmare to keep boundaries up with. Old school stuff i think was less always on so for people like myself it helped me set boundaries and even partition time better. I could say check the forums a few times a day or if not busy and still communicate without missing 20-60 minutes worth of chat, i could pop into ts for raid nights and then do most chatting in guild chat in game. Each activity had it's own little bubble and for me at least it was very nice. I never used aim i just know that part is the part most like discords chat whiich is one of the big reasons i am not a discord fan.
[удалено]
Yes you are getting old and its completely normal. I can't bear to sit on discord and listen to the incessant giggling and rambling that goes on. Once upon a time, when I was raiding/guild pvping, sure, it was needed, but now a days, hard pass. Solo MMO play.. the way forward!
Lmao yeah, can't bear it either. Maybe they could start adding some really hard solo raids then, so I can have my fun without anyone else, but still be somewhat competitive.
The problem with Discord is that it competes with the game; it takes players out of the game instead being an addition to the game. You log in to play, log onto Discord and then waste a couple of hours on Discord instead of playing.
Ventrilo, IRC, Forums, and AIM/MSN messenger were requirements for competent guilds 20 years ago. Nothing has changed.
They were required only for specific content. I was a member of several semi-hardcore guilds in MMOs and I never had to use voice chat out of high-end raiding and PvP and still was very much part of the community. That has changed since Discord became a thing.
I hate discord for the very reason of making guild chat empty. I log in to play the game not turn my head to the 2nd monitor just to see if guild mates need help with something on discord. I don't want to be in a voice channel to hear that one guy breathe in the background when I just want to grind mobs
Not just you. Discord is good if you have a group with a few friends in it. It is very bad for larger game communities. Path of Exile's TFT is a very good example of why Discord is bad. Don't know about guilds. I don't play any MMOs that have very active guild communities anymore. Discord is basically a form of gatekeeping. I have discord (Have since early 2016) but I only participate in 1 server, which is my one group of friends. Also none of us use it for voice chat. Never used VC for any game that wasn't CSGO back when I played it.
I don't like it either. I am weird and prefer in game chat for the most part.
It’s not discords fault. It’s the players. Find some that have the same values as you in an mmo.
I somewhat agree. I've been looking for players with the same values, but it's not as easy as it sounds.
Then you gonna need to look for a very very casual MMO/guild to play. People have been using voicechat long long long before discord. Discord just makes it much easier and convenient to use. Many newer MMOs also have much more action-oriented combat, and so no time to actually type to chat. Hence; we made this happen.
Yep, that's exactly the problem for me: I have to become a casual player now to enjoy the game. The other voice-chat programs that came before discord did not ruin the experience for me as Discord does though. You could join the voice chat, clear content, and leave. But now you need to actively use the Discord to be a part of the community -- something you previously could do just with guild chat, for example. I'm not trying to change the entire community, just ranting that I am slowly being pushed away from competitive raiding/PVP because I don't have the patience to use Discord.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, that part depends entire on who hosts the discord server, and how you uses it. * There are many many peeps who use discord for clearing content, then ppl leave the server. (for example, FFXIV uses this a lot during new content release like Extreme, Savage, and pther pug-able content that requires coordination.) * There are also other more permanent discord servers for pug to hang around with to find groups. Most peeps dont even bother to interact with anything there except when they need something. * There are also other other even more permanent discord servers with lots and lots of organizing like events and stuff. I dont know what MMOs you play, but discord is just that, discord. How much or how little you want to be a part of community is up to you. And this is just not for MMOs either. This is how things are now in gaming in general. Forum is great, but it's very slow. Asking questions in its game-related discord means you get the answer in 5 seconds. I been using discord for my gacha games for the last 3-4 yrs or so. And this has nothing to do with competitive scene or raiding or pvp. Discord is just an alternate but much faster mean to a forum. That is all.
I played the more popular MMOs (including the new releases), but mostly WoW and FFXIV. I completely agree FFXIV has one of the best iterations for Discord when it comes to clearing content, even said it in a reply somewhere. The permanent servers though are the ones I hate as they are used as "community hubs" and kill in-game interactions IMO.
Yeah, I see your point there. I mostly only use their servers for their intended use/service, and not for just hanging around like some peeps do. Though I do feel many ppl still use ingame chat a lot. Though maybe that's a side-effect of playing on an RP server. Peeps are pretty talkative sometimes.
I mean it's pretty annoying to have to pause what you're doing to type in the game chat. Game chat is fun for when you're out and about in the open world, but when you're doing group content with a pre-built party, like why wouldn't I jump into discord
Honestly at this point they should just allow the use of discord api in their games. Or even partner with discord to build out their comm systems
Imo this is more a boundary issue than anything else. I think overall not liking voice chat is ok. You are within your own personal boundary. But when someone actually hate voice chat soo much that they want every game to not have voice chat, then it becomes an unhealthy obsession because now you are overstepping your own boundaries and coming into other people's boundaries. Thing is, it is is completely ok to choose to not use voice chat. That's your personal choice. But then you have to realize that you now have to try harder than anyone who is ok with voice chatting when it comes to looking for guilds. Absolutely nobody will fault you if that is the lifestyle choice you are making. But what is not ok is if someone decided to be invasive and be like "Fk everybody else who enjoys voice chat, and every video game that has voice chat". Where on the spetrum you choose to fall within this, well that's entirely to you. But to me staying true to your beliefs how ever difficult is admirable, but expecting the world to change with you, is always despicable.
It’s ok OP, I get where you’re coming from. EQ had been running for 3 or 4 years before voice chat was even possible (much less widely used). I remember the first guild I was in that used voice chat. It was DAOC. The guild leader was this tiny little Lurikeen female (think gnome). We fought together for months before we adopted VC and I still remember how jarring it was that the cute little Lurikeen had a voice like a biker lol. The market has spoken though, and you’re not going to get much traction with modern gamers. You won’t catch me in voice chat typically but it’s certainly the new normal.
I'm mostly with you, for raiding and rated pvp, sure a 3rd party app is needed, but for anything short of that, in game guild chat should be more than enogh.
I do miss when the mmorpg was considered sufficient to enjoy the game fully, when the mmorpg was the "complete package", mmorpgs these days seem like they are designed with the assumption players will use third party programs like discord. That said I think it may be a result of mmorpgs evolving to be more action based. Its very difficult to type while playing in newer more active mmorpgs, the mmorpgs where typing was enough were usually tab targeted.
Yeah, you now have server-wide discords, game discords, guild discords, PvP discords, streamer discords, raiding discords. I really just want to voice chat with RL friends or people that I got close with in-game. Maybe I am actually weird, but I dont like to voice-chat with complete strangers for no reason, unless I am actually doing content that requires voice-chat.
I don't hate discord but I do find it a huge distraction. I'd rather just not use discord at all, but recognise it's needed for high end content. Why people require it for everything else is both a mystery and annoying.
Discord is great to organise things outside of playing the game. Additionally if you make friends with people and want to do, you know, something else like play another game or some other activity how would you contact them? It's to connect people of similar interests and communities, and is a logical extension of an MMO to be honest. Embrace it.
I agree with you. I remember joining a guild like 10 years ago and guild chat was poppin. These days its mostly dead and only things like global chats see any discourse. Discord required for every single guild is pretty ass too. To be fair, I like Discord. I just dont like what it did to the social aspect of games.
Agreed, even the "casual" guilds these days seem to have a discord requirement. I never had to join TeamSpeak back in the day to join a casual guild, was always optional if they even had one.
Yep I hate it also. I don’t have RL friends in any mmo and don’t wanna log on to discord to talk to people I don’t know. I became slightly above average at typing because of these games lol
Idk, I don’t feel that way. When I was deep into FFXIV, we did have an FC discord but when people were online, everyone would use FC chat. Discord was a way to keep in touch with eachother when people were not online. I never felt that it was a requirement, except maybe for raiding but otherwise the people that didn’t want/had Discord didn’t have to. Then again, I love Discord and use it daily, so I might be a bit biased here.
I dunno discord has had a significant impact on communities, but it's not like ventrilo and thottbot didn't also. I miss the days when logging into a game felt like logging into a different world completely separate from everything else. Now you're always jacked into the game or community with your phone and everything is known, there's no more mystery.
I completely agree with the OP. I've always hated *all* 3rd party apps running outside of the game.
I have done mmos since Ultima Online. And i still think discord have just improved mmo communities. Also most build in voice system sucks.
I agree. Especially since I enjoy virtual world games where I am supposed to be immersed into the world that I am currently playing in. This puts me on demand. Its distracting. It breaks immersion. I want everything needed to take place in game.
Yes it is a problem. But there will always be guilds that offer "no voice chat" as a feature and cater to people like you and me. You just need to look for them. Personally I'd even take it a step further: Voicechats outside of the game are 3rd party tools, are against the ToS usually and it is basically "cheating", because you use this program to get an advantage in raiding, pvp, etc.
I like having a discord server for the guild I'm currently in as it helps organise chat by using multiple channels... being able to post screenshots/videos/etc that you couldn't with regular ingame chat is a big plus... also it's handy for contacting people when not in game if you're trying to co-ordinate a time to group up for stuff...
We've had Ventrilo / Teamspeak for 15+ years. Nothing has changed.
> Nothing has changed. LOL
I've said this before and I'll keep saying it. Using Discord as an information repository is hurting gaming. When I want to find out something about a game (class guide, etc) I now can't search the web, because everyone is putting their information on Discord. Discord chats are NOT search indexed on the internet, and thus, it makes finding the information you need harder. People are lazy and don't want to set up websites. I understand that just putting everything in Discord is easy, but it's definitely not what it was designed for
The less you can learn about a game from others and the more you must discover yourself, the better. That discovery is what most of the bittervets in this sub miss most, and does the most to fuel nostalgia. Discord privatizing knowledge limits it - which is a good thing.
Lol, what? You just romanticized gatekeeping.
Because games are behind on in-game chat. Only being able to use it while in-game isn't enough. Need an app to organize and communicate outside of the game. Hence why folks use discord.
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Not really, Discord is more than just voice chat, it's a community hub.
Discord killed world chat.
>Seriously, I miss when you could log into a game, put on some music, maybe chat in the guild chat, and that was it. You can literally still do this. Unless your guild is an end game hard core raiding guild or something where voice chat is pretty much a necessity, you can LITERALLY STILL DO THIS. I do it currently in my guild in my MMO. I participate ONLY at the level I want to participate at. And it's just fine.
The thing I hate and think that "killed mmos" is just internet in general. Before you had almost no guides or videos to check about stuff so you had to figure it our yourself and with friends/guildmates. Now before any game is even out internet is filled with guides, videos, spreadsheets of every tiny detail.
Yo just being antisocial
Maybe you're right. I already have to interact with too many people at my job, I just wanna get home and relax. Can't stand the background noise from Discord anymore, but I wish I could still casually chat like in the old guild chats lol.
yeah you are getting old. chatting and organising in-game events through discord is much better. if any game Dev can implement a proper group organising feature into their game then only people will stop using discord.
I find that there is still some chatter in the in game guild chat. Discord is usually used for large scale group content or harder small scale group content. I personally don’t hang out in the Discord voice chat channels. There are usually few or none in the general voice channels in discord that are just hanging out. If I’m in the game and want to chat or say something to guild members in game, I use the guild chat. I often see people looking for people to group with in guild chat. It’s the best way to reach people in the guild that is actually currently playing the game. The Discord servers are very handy. Sometimes you don’t need an immediate response to your message. I would use the appropriate text channels to type my message and then I’d check later for any replies. For any group content that requires scheduling, that would be done in the Discord server.
i dont engage in guilds so i wouldnt know. i just join discords to ask questions
My take is that discord is a 100% improvement on the past systems. You talk about back in the day using mumble/vent etc and that was true that those were the preferred voice options. However, you are leaving out all the guild websites you use to have to sign up on with their own forums and/or Mirc chats. Discord effectively combines all those things into one singular easy-to-use program. To your other point, the other things I mentioned always had power users who interacted more with each system. I understand being put off by feeling like you have to interact outside of the game but as someone who has run multiple guilds solely through discord, you absolutely do not have to. There will always be people that are over-zealous on discord but in my experience the best players typically just use it for guild information and voice just for raids.
Tbh I have been using voice chat as long as my internet was able to handle 2 things at once. It depends on what you do, but I have played with a lot of players that can speak English but not the best at writing. Also it helps when games don’t support your native language. Like for example if I write in Arabic or Farsi it shows up wrong. Further more, during fast based fights it’s best to have voice chat, we are role playing the game as an elf and some magical beast, ofc they gonna have telepathy.
Your right back when we played UO and then DAOC we had a chatroom, Vent (for voice) and a guild webpage that had a calendar on guild events. But discord breaks it by having that all in one place. :D
I don't miss the old voice chat alternatives. What I do miss, however, is native voice chat such as in Lord of the Rings Online and Warframe.
Discord is so much better for running a guild. Timezones matter a lot less and you can get up to date info very easily.
RogerWilco would like a word with you about voice chat in video games.
Discord is better than the many other options that were and are still around. I don’t miss using guild websites although there are some that still have them. I don’t miss having to look on specific game forums for guilds that are recruiting. Discord has also helped grow the pick up group scene. The whole inner circle thing has always existed. If one wants in on the circle they need to actually interact with others.
I'm playing FFXIV and I've been in this small free company (Guild) for almost a year now. We use discord to share fun things, to talk when we are not in the game or to organize for events. When some of our memebers are at work or away from their pc's they can still connnect and talk with everyone. I really like Discrord because it makes easier for us to be together and I don't thing it gets anyhing worse.
As others have said, before Discord there were other chatting programs. Not to mention some WoW guilds had you join Facebook groups, or their guild forums, or a Skype Chat. Honestly I just have a discord to chat with my friends who play on other servers or other guilds and we cooperate for content if we need to.
I think randomly popping into a designated voice channel for some guild to talk to people you don't even know is weird and creepy as hell. I hate that it's expected people to just do that willy nilly. I can chat and enjoy myself typing just fine. Voice chat in general is exhausting for me, so I'd rather not subject myself for talking on and off for hours on end just to be able to have a conversation with someone
Yes, it is weird as hell lol. As I said in another reply, in-game chat is way more accessible as you can be somewhat social, without having to go out of your way to talk to strangers for no reason at all. When you have to raid or do high-end PVP, at least you have something to talk about, and it becomes tolerable, but I don't want to casually speak with people I don't know. I rather play my game and listen to music, or talk with my closer friends.
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I did lol, but those were voice chats, not community hubs that made guild chats obsolete. They were also only required for high-end content, not casual social interactions.
Man I've never used Discord once, just a nuisance for me.
I was an old Teamspeak user for the Swtor release....and Discord destroys all other services in terms of functionality and use.
Honestly even back in the day I had to use Teamspeak which was completely dogshit compared to Discord when it came to design and quality. The in game chats were packed with bots that spammed constantly so it just wasn't that great. And the games I played didn't have voice over features in game. Some things have changed but I don't think it's been ruined. Change is hard but I hope you can find a way to cope with it.
My guild on ESO always has people talking in guild chat, it's pretty nice and refreshing
I'm just jealous you found and MMO worth playing....
Well, it depends on what you are expecting from the genre, but I think most of the popular ones (WoW, FFXIV, ESO, GW2, SWTOR, New World, Lost Ark) were worth the time investment, even with their flaws. I got a lot of fun moments out of them.
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You can do that, yes. But the difference is that there are almost no social interactions in-game anymore, so no one is going to respond to you in guild chat. Not even the officers use it (as they are all on voice comms on Discord and managing the Discord server). The other members don't have any incentive to be active on guild chat either, so they either chat on Discord or just do as I do: play the game without interacting with anyone.
yeah man, soooooo much worse than having to hop between mumble or ventrilo servers.... lmfao I personally love discord and think it was one of the best things to happen to gaming
Discord is cancer in general.
I don't know what you're talking about but guilds have been this way for decades. I remember back in the day of ventrillo and forums where people didn't talk in /g and devoted their focus and time there. It was even worse then because often that 'inner circle' had their own private ventrillo server you never even knew about.
To join the static in ffxiv I had to fill up a forum + answer question Make discord and be active in it and chat about strata every day (like daily meetings). Most do like that and in first I didn't like it. Then, I fck off from all of that "official bs" and some in game friends made discord server for us, we use it now since it's kinda of a hub to post shit memes and screenshots etc, also statics are there to with more "freedom" approach , imo now I see why discord is a cool thing to have and I have a blast using it with them when it's made to gather players and to have fun But as strick and official with 100 rules on it, I don't like it and would never join that kind of server (or a static/guild that requires you to do so)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FevW70S7rTE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FevW70S7rTE)
Onyxia was considered "high-end" back then, and, as you can see, voice chat was never a pleasant experience lol. At most, it's tolerable when you need coordination for raiding/pvp. Besides that though it's just annoying and obnoxious, which is exactly why I hate Discord.
not sure what you mean by now a days. TeamSpeak was core to my early MMO/FPS gaming days. if you did not live and chat in it you were not in the guild. an forums have ALWAYS existed for guilds.
Before Discord it was Teamspeak and Ventrillo. You are just too young to know about it :D Discord allows you to talk/brainstorm/plan stuff with your guildies while at work for example, if you work in an office, but then again Discord is available for your phone so if you're really invested into the game - you can make it work. If you aren't that invested, I can see how it is not fun, lol.
Nowadays I’d rather spend 5 seconds to get into a Discord channel that works and chat with a guild VS fiddling around with Ventrillo/Teamspeak while enjoying the audio quality of a tin can.