Guildleader Chores - Change is hard, and is a freebie as good as it looks?

Some time ago, Crooked told me about Discord. I looked into it and I had been surreptitiously using it to chat to Aimei to get the hang of it whilst we were concurrently on Ventrilo. I'm not that Discord-savvy yet, but it has some great features including a web-based ability so you don't have to have the program installed to listen, but you need the program if you want to speak. Great when you're travelling and want to listen to the raid.  It also has non-voice chat channels where you can post pictures and videos much to everyone's amusement.


It's a lot like Skype but with certain little things I like - such as Individual Volume Control. Voe too loud? Well I can turn him RIIIIIGHT down!

Because of my Vent server issues the other day and after trying Discord, we thought we would try it too. And it was alright - the voice part is quite crisp, and the latency is low. And it's FREE.

I don't know if they will make us pay for it in the future (I doubt it), but I do wonder how they make money. I even wrote to them wondering about it, and they replied:
Cilantrelle (Discord)
Sep 3, 23:09
Hey Navimie,
Glad to hear everything's working out great! We have no plans to charge for any of Discord's core functionality, so if you want to bring the whole guild on board, we'd be happy to welcome everyone to the Discord family!
We do have plans to release skins, sound packs, and other cosmetics for financial purposes, but Discord will be free!
If you have any other questions or feedback, let us know! We're all ears. :D
Cheers,
Cilantrelle
But I need to fix it up a lot. I have to figure out how to link the channels better etc. Aimei linked me some info that I need to go through so I can improve my Discord server.

But, how can something that looks so good be free?

Discord has had a lot of money poured into it by investors, and so they seem pretty happy for the moment to let everyone use it for free, with plans in the future for stickers and cosmetic things to make some cashflow. Not sure I'd do that though. If they were like 10c, maybe.

There was some concern with the privacy disclaimers that Discord had. Jason jumped onto reddit to answer some concerns people had:
Hey nfowleri - I'm one of the devs (and founder) on Discord. Just thought I'd jump in and clarify. For some context, this policy was written for our first product which was a game. Discord is really really new, and we haven't had a chance to make a new one specifically for it yet. I realize that's not ideal, but we'll have a Discord specific policy ready soon.
Our intention is to build an amazing product that modernizes VOIP and Chat apps for gamers. We do not intend to profit off of invading your privacy or selling your data. We will not sell your data to 3rd parties. We will not read your messages or record your conversations.
Your "browser history" does not belong to us and cannot be accessed by us. Browsers do not even make the data available. The only history data we get is the website that referred you to Discord called the "referring Web Site." This is very typical and is used so we can tell where our traffic comes from (i.e., reddit or google).
As for the "usage and activity" that refers to our use of analytics so we can improve Discord. We very often review anonymized and non-anonymized usage data so we can learn what features people use, what features people may be confusing, etc. The goal is to include real data in our understanding of how to improve Discord. This sort of thing is very typical for all software these days... and it's a part of what will help us make Discord awesome.
Anyway, I hope that clarifies a bit. I know it's important to stay vigilant when dealing with companies since you never know who is going to be nefarious or not. I hope that we'll be able to demonstrate over time that we're one of the Good Guys :-)
Thanks and lmk if you have any more questions. I'm @jasoncitron on twitter and will be checking reddit regularly.
The privacy thing was a bit concern. But people on Facebook and Twitter surely have the same data collection being done to them, so I wasn't that fussed with what Discord was doing with the information they were collecting. I did worry that they were selling the information they took from us to other companies for advertising/marketing purposes, but it looks like that's not the case, phew.

It's not a perfect system though, but every chat program has its dropouts. We had a server dropout at a crucial time during an achievement we were attempting last Thursday. However, for what it is right now, it's great and I would highly recommend it as a gaming chat program. The other great thing about it was on Thursday I had a suburban power failure and I just jumped onto my mobile phone client and listened to the raid as well as told them what had happened to me. Handy! Couldn't do that with Mumble or Ventrilo!

I'd love to hear your experiences with it and whether there are any drawbacks to Discord that I haven't come across yet. Feel free to leave comments anonymously if you're shy :D

Comments

  1. I love Discord! The android app functionality is awesome, so much better than the teamspeak or ventrilo apps. I love Teamspeak though, but Discord won me over.

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    Replies
    1. Yay! Crooked did say you really like it, and I like it too - I hope that it stays as good as it is (or gets even better)

      Delete
  2. Discord just makes me have crazy huge First world problems.

    https://feedback.discordapp.com/forums/326712-discord-dream-land/suggestions/10819134-always-focus-the-input-box-when-discord-is-brought

    OMFG this enrages me so much.

    And every now and then I see crazy balls lag on the voice side. But largely its great. I kinda miss IRC tho as a result.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. IRC... gosh you're so old. Though I can't talk, I still have my IRC number written down somewhere...

      Delete
    2. IRC is not ICQ navi.

      And yes, I have a 6 digit icq.

      Delete
    3. Whoops ICQ! My god my memory dies as I get older...

      Delete

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