Is your guild switching to discord?

[Resurgo]

We have a group message (sort of like a WhatsApp group) going between the officers which is our officer chat.

We also have text channels which are restricted by roles so our tanks/healers can talk between themselves.

If you have your roles setup properly you could have officer chat as a restricted text channel but we thought there is a risk that someone could mess up and change the perms giving visibility to everyone so we used a group message instead.

We actually use WhatsApp for now when out of game for officer discussions.

The biggest problem still remains on how to have an on the fly all in one VoIP solution that retains the binds system that Vent has. Officers can decide amongst themselves whether a piece of loot should go one way or the other, etc.

[RestoChango]

Wait, what widget is that?

It's a native feature of Warcraft Logs, if you are officer level in your guild on warcraft logs you can go to guild settings, then go to the widgets section and add the webhook which you generated in discord for the text channel you want it posted in.

[Deavane]

With Discord becoming the new FoTM in terms of VoIP are there any guilds out there that are going to switch to it for there VoIP coms?

I've had a play and although I do have Discord installed with a few chats for a few different topics I've not ventured into the VoIP and mainly seen it as an IIRC chat frame more then anything.

The idea of having 10-30 people inside a chat room on free software does worry me since there is very little control over server stability or indeed the level of control with such a high number of people.

Has any guilds swapped over to it for there raiding?

Personally; I just don't understand the finance side behind it. They have lots of partners and sponsorship deals going around, without seeing any way for it to be revenue stream. On there website they say they will be generating revenue from selling:

Now call me old fashioned but the price of hosting the multiple number of VoIP calls, the database requirements of all those lines of texts means that those shiny cosmetics aren't going to be covering the cost. Unless the sponsorship deals will become "Hey I'm XXXX buy my Discord skin for $5! (Oh BTW only $1 goes to me, but $4 goes to Discord!)" which again seems a very strange business model.

I do want to point out: I can understand that it might be replacing Skype as the PVP; but i want to hear about raiders.

From a raiding perspective, I think it is the best VOIP program available currently. Having both voice and text channels is great. Discord has even almost replaced our website, outside of applications and posting out. I also think the UI of Discord is better than many of the older VOIP programs. Oh and also, the mobile app for Discord is fantastic. I know other VOIPS offer mobile apps, but Discord does it better IMO.

Note: Noticing people discuss having back-channels/separate binds for side channels. I've never been a fan of using a VOIP that offers back-channels. Back-channels tend to lead to toxicity unless they are well managed (disabled for use outside of select users, etc.).

[RestoChango]

We actually use WhatsApp for now when out of game for officer discussions.

The biggest problem still remains on how to have an on the fly all in one VoIP solution that retains the binds system that Vent has. Officers can decide amongst themselves whether a piece of loot should go one way or the other, etc.

Sounds like you have a specific use case, we never used private binds and just drop a channel when we want to chat to each other over voice about something or when we do loot council. For little things we just communicate on officer chat in game.

We have a pretty honest raid group though where everything is basically open including our priority for loot, our loot spreadsheet for who got what loot, our raid attendence spreadsheet which tracks who came to what raid etc.. so everyone knows everything and we don't hide things from our raiders. If someone is messing up we also tell them either by whisper if it's small or will just say it in raid chat if specific people need to change things rather than taking behind peoples backs so it's pretty rare we drop a channel in raid outside of loot council.

Discord is so good for our that our guild litteraly laughs when we hear of other guilds that still use vent or TeamSpeak.

[Resurgo]

Note: Noticing people discuss having back-channels/separate binds for side channels. I've never been a fan of using a VOIP that offers back-channels. Back-channels tend to lead to toxicity unless they are well managed (disabled for use outside of select users, etc.).

I don't disagree that it's one of the best. We've been testing and waffling between Discord and Curse. However, having back-channels, or separate binds for officers does well when we want to insulate the rest of the guild from a discussion that pertains to the officers only. Whether it pertains to future guild plans, directions, or tactics. Dropping up and down a channel is simply less convenient vs having a separate button bound to officer chat.

I can think of less toxic uses, such as healers calling out and staggering cooldowns on people between themselves without having to interrupt the focus of the rest of the raid or raid leader.

Tanks can call out things to each other if they want without interrupting, etc and so on.

...
Discord is so good for our that our guild litteraly laughs when we hear of other guilds that still use vent or TeamSpeak.

heh, I've hated Vent forever, but can't deny that there's a few simple tools, like that above mentioned binds option for officers, that is the only remaining reason why some folk haven't fully migrated over.

What amuses me even more is the fact that something as ancient as Vent still has this ability, yet I've seen plenty of people asking/wanting a feature like this on current VoIP programs like Discord and Curse, that I don't understand why it's not an option. It's almost like telling us you don't want us all to convert over.

[Sierra85]

discord is the first VOIP software for gaming that i feel really has the ability to challenge Vent/Teamspeak.

its just so nice.

[RoKPaNda]

Sound quality is horrible. It's about as bad as vent. Went back to TS.

[Aquinan]

Sound quality is horrible. It's about as bad as vent. Went back to TS.

Has been fine for us, have had the occasional issue, about the same as vent or ts.

[Deavane]

I don't disagree that it's one of the best. We've been testing and waffling between Discord and Curse. However, having back-channels, or separate binds for officers does well when we want to insulate the rest of the guild from a discussion that pertains to the officers only. Whether it pertains to future guild plans, directions, or tactics. Dropping up and down a channel is simply less convenient vs having a separate button bound to officer chat.

I can think of less toxic uses, such as healers calling out and staggering cooldowns on people between themselves without having to interrupt the focus of the rest of the raid or raid leader.

Tanks can call out things to each other if they want without interrupting, etc and so on.



heh, I've hated Vent forever, but can't deny that there's a few simple tools, like that above mentioned binds option for officers, that is the only remaining reason why some folk haven't fully migrated over.

What amuses me even more is the fact that something as ancient as Vent still has this ability, yet I've seen plenty of people asking/wanting a feature like this on current VoIP programs like Discord and Curse, that I don't understand why it's not an option. It's almost like telling us you don't want us all to convert over.

I think you make some good points in your response to my post. I'd agree, if you can utilize in that manner, I think having back-channels can be great for communication. However, I feel most guilds that allow them or that have players who utilize them, use them primarily to speak within a click or small group. These small groups tend to breed toxicity within guilds.

I do agree with your ways of using back-channels for beneficial purposes however. For me, moving down a channel isn't a huge deal though.

[Deleted]

Too bad voice quality compared to mumble to make a switch.
Also we don't need any of the bloat in Discord, we just need a voicechat.

[Benomatic]

Used Discord once and it was terrible. Really bad sound quality with lag and connection loss. Vent is a personal favourite but that is probably due to nostalgia. Curse has been really really good so far. Very good.

[Halicia]

Too bad voice quality compared to mumble to make a switch.
Also we don't need any of the bloat in Discord, we just need a voicechat.

While I understand people like having a twitter/facebook feed in their social client, some of it is just frightening how much people are willing to air their dirty laundry when they open their Discord up to pugs. I'd be a little skittish about all that info being kept serverside by a company with a sketchy/nonexistent business model.

When there was a week or two hiccup with our server a few years back, we simply had our raid connect to a new address til we setup a new one. What happens if/when discord's server shuts down ? Unless they manage to parley the product into a sale to an established online presence, its kinda inevitable that the free ride will end at some point.

[Sonnillon]

While I understand people like having a twitter/facebook feed in their social client, some of it is just frightening how much people are willing to air their dirty laundry when they open their Discord up to pugs. I'd be a little skittish about all that info being kept serverside by a company with a sketchy/nonexistent business model.

But you can create a secondary channel for PUGs and use that with the guild if you need to pug? Or limit the viewing and replying in text chat with certain user groups/rights. That's how I keep my PUG run channel separate from my main raid's channel and handle the access to text chat with groups. Just a thought ^^

[RestoChango]

While I understand people like having a twitter/facebook feed in their social client, some of it is just frightening how much people are willing to air their dirty laundry when they open their Discord up to pugs. I'd be a little skittish about all that info being kept serverside by a company with a sketchy/nonexistent business model.

When there was a week or two hiccup with our server a few years back, we simply had our raid connect to a new address til we setup a new one. What happens if/when discord's server shuts down ? Unless they manage to parley the product into a sale to an established online presence, its kinda inevitable that the free ride will end at some point.

If you care about pugs not being able to see information either restrict pugs from being able to see/post on the wall by setting up permissions for your raiders or just have raiders post anything you want private in a different channel (we do the latter).

We have people come into our discord from other top guilds on our server and our raiders as well as officers go on their servers to do pug groups and I haven't seen anything bad come out of it, in fact quite the opposite happened and we have picked up a couple of good raiders over time because their GM's are overbearing about Discord/Vent management and they like a more social guild with some transparency.

In terms of loss of discord went away tommorow without any notice I don't think the impact would be very big since Discord isn't actually that good for doing behind the scenes guild management and I know that at least for our guild all of the important comp/raid tracking/recruiting/strat information is in Google Sheets, Google Docs and Google Drive so discord going away would just lose us some of our discussion.

[Slicer299]

Other than stubbornness or being resistant to change, there really is no reason to not use Discord over Mumble. Or any other VoIP for that matter. The common excuse as to why Mumble is better is supposedly it's superior voice quality, but both Mumble and Discord use the exact same Opus audio codec for voice communication. Any claims of Mumble sounding "better" is anecdotal and not backed up by the facts.

And yes, some people have trouble with Discord working correctly, but the same is true for Mumble, TS3, and every other VoIP. Different people will run into issues due to the nature of everyone on PC having a slightly different set up. There is zero evidence that more people, or even a significant number of people, have trouble with or more trouble with Discord.

But benefit/feature wise, there is exactly 1 feature Mumble has that Discord doesn't, positional audio, but that's not something most or even a lot of people use for their VoIP. While at the same time DIscord offers dozens of features Mumble can't touch. One very basic one, being able to manually adjust other users, is a huge problem that holds Mumble back for no reason other than the stubbornness of it's developers. Their flat out refusal to all users to manually adjust individuals volumes is mind boggling. Especially when the auto balancer has never, ever, worked.

[Deleted]

Other than stubbornness or being resistant to change, there really is no reason to not use Discord over Mumble.

Oh yes, there is. Discord is an american company, which treats privacy like shit. Mumble is big on privacy. The problem with Discord is that you can not host it yourself. That means all your data gets read and analysied by a 3rd party, with all of the consequences. I would never ask my guild mates to put private data out there, so Discord is out of the question. That leaves Mumble, TS3 and Ventrilo as self-hosted solutions.

Why do you think Discord is hosted? They could easily have relesed server software for self-hosting. But that isn't the goal of Discord. Discord is a means to an end, and thats the business with data.

TS3, Mumble and Ventrilo have much more clear-cut goals. And for raiding, Discord offers little the other 3 also have. You don't need pings for raiding (I can see why its useful for EVE Online). I can't speak for Mumble, but TS3 has the ability to manually adjust people volume.

[Deztru]

But you can create a secondary channel for PUGs and use that with the guild if you need to pug? Or limit the viewing and replying in text chat with certain user groups/rights. That's how I keep my PUG run channel separate from my main raid's channel and handle the access to text chat with groups. Just a thought ^^

There is absolutely nothing stopping you creating a temporary sub-channel in TS3/Mumble

I've never noticed any sound quality difference in any VOIP that I've used, also voice quality is not a determining factor for me.

I'm looking for a VOIP, not a Facebook/Twitter/Whatsapp/VOIP combo. How hard is that to understand with the Discord fanboys?

[minteK917]

Discord is superior in every way for an overall guild or community.

[Sonnillon]

I'm looking for a VOIP, not a Facebook/Twitter/Whatsapp/VOIP combo. How hard is that to understand with the Discord fanboys?

Yes, I might be a fanboy, don't care much what you happen to call me. Yes, I might be stingy enough for not to rent a whatnot voice server from someone. I might be lazy enough to put some work into getting something running (though I even have hardware and connection to handle it).
My crew and PUGs are using it for voice, maybe occasional links as well to important shit, as can be done in any other app. But to everyone their own, just stating my opinion, as you are doing yours.

However what people don't see to really comprehend, is that it is a perfect option for those who don't do full guild raiding or run PUGs or have a strong community in other games or outside of WoW.
When someone who is completely clueless takes ages in getting the preferred VoIP sorted and running (maybe even installing). With discord you just give web link and done. Can even set it to expire if paranoid enough.

So the TS/Mumble/Vent fanboys can stick to their programs, while plebs like me prefer something more easier to share ^^

[Slicer299]

Oh yes, there is. Discord is an american company, which treats privacy like shit. Mumble is big on privacy. The problem with Discord is that you can not host it yourself. That means all your data gets read and analysied by a 3rd party, with all of the consequences. I would never ask my guild mates to put private data out there, so Discord is out of the question. That leaves Mumble, TS3 and Ventrilo as self-hosted solutions.

Why do you think Discord is hosted? They could easily have relesed server software for self-hosting. But that isn't the goal of Discord. Discord is a means to an end, and thats the business with data.

TS3, Mumble and Ventrilo have much more clear-cut goals. And for raiding, Discord offers little the other 3 also have. You don't need pings for raiding (I can see why its useful for EVE Online). I can't speak for Mumble, but TS3 has the ability to manually adjust people volume.

If you are going to post, don't post lies. Your privacy is 100% in your control with Discord. They don't gain access to any information you don't willingly share with them. People have made the same argument you're making now, and it's never backed up by the facts. You try to inject things into the ToS or EULA that aren't actually there. Yes it talks about collecting certain information, but ONLY if you choose to use certain features. Such as linking other accounts to Discord to utilize the social aspects of it's platform. But if you never link those different account, Discord isn't able to collect any personal information on you.

Also, from now on, anytime anyone who tries to complain about privacy, they must first prove they do not have, and have never had, any social media or Google account of any kind. NO ONE collects, sells and shares more data than FB and Google. So before anyone complains about that 100% voluntary data collection of programs like Discord, they have to prove they are not a hypocrite that uses FB or Google.

As for feature differences, stop trying to make it look like things I never said. I only ever said Mumble doesn't have the ability to adjust individual volumes, I know full well TS3 allows you to do so. Even the joke that is Ventrilo has that option, it's part of what makes it such a big deal that Mumble doesn't. So don't try to act like I implied differently. The real benefit of Discord comes from it's real chat channels, yes TS3 has chat, but it's a joke by comparison. Those real chat channels improve the social and information sharing aspect of guilds and groups. Being able to post a video in Discord, that no one has to launch in a browser to watch, helps with fight progression. Pinning messages that guild members have to read for any number of reasons removes confuse and limits questions.

You can literally replace a guild forum with Discord. You set one of the channels as the default channel for pugs and potential new members that includes all the recruitment info you need to post. At most you may need a Google Doc for an app people can fill out. (But that brings us back to the Hypocrite issue, if you don't mind using Google, you have nothing to complain about with Discord) The permission system easily keeps them locked out of the rest of the server. And being able to force PtT on pugs, and other annoying people, either by channel or permission group goes a long way to preserving sanity.

I also get a chuckle out of people trying to complain about a lack of private server hosting. As if paying some random 3rd party you know nothing about somehow makes things better or more secure. There is nothing stopping those private Mumble hosts from spying on you and not telling you about it. Not saying that does happen, but it's just as possible for them to do it as it is for Discord to do it. And for the record, Discord doesn't.