You might have wondered about how best to reach out to others via unique apps differing from the common ones like Skype and so on, worry no more for Discord has got your back to aid swift communication with every person you wish for. Stay tuned to learn more about Discord in this article!
Commonly, people love to stay in touch, whether via chatting with friends and family on video calls, messaging on WhatsApp, or by touching base while working remotely with Microsoft Teams or Slack. Gamers similarly do all these as well.
While playing video games on PC, players often need to solve two problems: firstly, how to discuss with one another, and secondly, how to coordinate people long enough to get a game going.
In the early days, gamers do make use of text chat services such as X-Fire or VOIP servers the likes of Mumble, Teamspeak or Ventrilo. However, technology and demands has evolved.
Today, the modern gamer requires something that can do it all and Discord is a free software that meets such need. It can be assumed to be the most recent in the list of apps designed to solve such a problem. Discord has quickly become one of the most popular platforms with chatting features comparable to the approachable kind of chat UI found in apps like Slack, also bearing video and voice chat options as recorded to be of use by about 250 million users, with 14 million people logging in on a daily basis. Not only is discord useful to converse with your friends while playing games, but also useful for creating an avenue where people can come together, meet up to find other players, and socialize.
Discord is particularly useful when you’re trying to play PC games. The app makes chatting quite easy, and provide a search function which can help you to find other people and add them to a friends list for quick communication. A lot of people make use of it, not just for talking to one another while playing games, but as an organizational and social tool.
Owing to this breadth of functionality, users have as well embraced Discord as a semipublic, forum-style community platform where groups of players with common interests, such as fans of a particular game or studio can create or join servers, both private and public, whichever way they want it. And there, lots of people can get to meet and hang out, chatting via text, voice or video.
How to create a Discord server
While most of the servers are related to gaming, you can also find public Discord servers that focused on variety of topics, including things like anime, cryptocurrency, self-improvement, and friends-making and hanging out. There is also nothing required for creating servers that are used for gaming, simply put, it is free. So if you want a place in Discord to discuss a topic, you can always create one. Easy places to find and search for public servers include Discord.me, Disboard.org and Discordservers.com.
When you create a Discord server, you can configure it in several ways by setting up different roles for the members, for instance, creating roles for other administrators and moderators or creating a unique role for your most active members. Creating different member roles has a number of benefits for your server including making it easier to manage, rewarding members for being active, as well as providing different access permissions.
What distinguishes discord from other platforms
Even though we have a lot of free communication programs online, Discord stands out, thanks to its wide array of chat options. It combines all the best features of more commonly used programs, like Slack and Skype, with an easy-to-use interface. A voice chat program would not be much of use if it is slowing down your games while you’re using it, hence, the team making Discord aims at making it as efficient as possible.
These versatility has led large groups of users to welcome Discord as a place to meet and chat with people who are having common interest, and not just mere friends. Owing to a critical study of discord, it can be submitted that it is part communication app and part social media portal. While the chat room side of the app, in which users can join public or private “servers,” is probably its most popular, it also provides a social forum that is great for organizing people to play games as well. In essence, you don’t really need video games to make Discord useful, reason been that it is extremely handy for joining with groups of friends in a private server, or meeting like-minded folks in public ones.
How does Discord works?
Discord simply works through Servers. Similar to the other chat apps, such as Slack, Discord enables you to set up a chat room referred to as a server, with which you can invite people. Whenever you invite someone to the server, such person gets a link that permit them to join it, where they can either text or voice chat with other people using that server. Each server can be further broken down into “channels”; small spaces for discussions on specific topics, in contrast to a giant live forum. Channels do come in voice and text versions, to make them easier to use. You can also make individual channels on your server private, such that only people who are invited into those rooms can use them. Servers can be either public, which anyone can join, or private, which is accessible by invitation only.
It is possible to be a part of multiple servers at the same time, thereby making Discord a hub for social interaction. Its possible to have one private server for oneself and friends particularly, so you can coordinate before playing a game, while as well being a part of several public servers. This is possible because there is no limit on how many servers you can be a part of. So you can switch from server to server at will, and with ease.
Joining a server is as easy as clicking a link, though, prior to that, you need to be invited. Many servers are public and available through Discord’s search function — for instance, Pokémon Go players in Los Angeles have a public “PoGo LA” server to control the playing of the game in their city, and anybody can join it.
It’s likewise possible to search for users and add them as friends. When you know their username and they have set their privacy settings to allow for search, you can find them using the search field at the top-left of the screen. Afterward, you can add those public people as friends just by clicking on the photos of any user on the list.
