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Smokey_Run

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
4,631
Depends on the size of the population. I was part of a very small fan site where we were always on the forums. We started a Discord and before long the vast majority of the conversations were happening there and the forums died.
 

RexNovis

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,174
Discord is nuts. I have a really really hard time following conversations on Discord and it always seems like its impossible to keep up with things. Forums are way more manageable imo.
 

ASaiyan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,228
Internet message boards are pretty much already dead. They're a very ancient standard and we are an outlier. Not that I mind being a part of an old platform, lol.
 
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BRSxIgnition

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,596
It really depends.

For active discussion about a fast-moving topic, Discord is better.

For longer form discussion and archiving, Message Boards are better.

The Canadian Gaming Deals thread/community has done well to balance both its discord server and its thread here on Era, as have many others that I've seen since the migration began.
 

Titik

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,490
Discord is good for organizing in real time. Not so good for actual discussions.
 

Aeana

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,938
Message boards are asynchronous communication, Discord is synchronous. Message boards have generally been killed by things like Facebook and Twitter. Discord has replaced things like AIM and IRC.
 

c0Zm1c

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,206
It killed a long running forum/archive (2006-2017) of a very small community that originated from the Xbox.com forums that I'm still a part of, and we lost more than we gained from moving to Discord I felt (including a member), all for a short-term increase in activity. :\
 

Haunted

Banned
Nov 3, 2017
2,737
Wait, I don't actually know what discord is (I thought it would be voice chatrooms like Mumble or Ventrilo), but from the descriptions in here it sounds more like IRC? You type and stuff?
 

Big Powder

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,201
It killed our IRC, that's for sure.
Gotta agree with this. I ran a fairly active IRC channel with about 40 daily chatters and one day someone suggested we make a Discord and bam! That was it! The IRC chat is full of nothing but lurkers now, everyone who actually posted moved to the Discord and never looked back. I miss it dearly, and they'll have to pry my IRC from my cold dead hands.

As for message boards, a good number of those chatters had abandoned message boards in favor of real-time chat long ago, many of them having given up on them once they found the IRC.
 

BLLYjoe25

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,969
i don't like Discord. i only use it to find people to play Destiny 2 with and i hardly even play that anymore.
 

ColdSun

Together, we are strangers
Administrator
Oct 25, 2017
3,291
Wait, I don't actually know what discord is (I thought it would be voice chatrooms like Mumble or Ventrilo), but from the descriptions in here it sounds more like IRC? You type and stuff?
Its both text and voice chat, with emojis and can play media inside the chat.
 

JetSetSoul

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,185
I don't know what it is exactly but I don't play hardly any multi games consistently. It's comfy here, I'll stay.
 

CheeseWraith

Member
Oct 28, 2017
618
I got hooked on Discord by my Destiny 2 clan.
It was a pleasant surprise, and I wouldn't go back...but it's definitely not a substitute for forum discussions.
 

oni-link

tag reference no one gets
Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,024
UK
Old folks go on message boards. Before anyone asks, yes I'm an oldie.

I prefer forums because I'm busy now I'm an adult, and what with work, chores, family, relationships etc it's hard to find time to sit down and mess around on a chat room for a few hours

I can post on a forum and go away for hours and then come back and pick up the discussion where I left it
 

Laser Man

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,683
My only experience with discord was in the transitioning phase from gaf to here... I actually liked it but I haven't gone there for months now, it was only in that transitioning phase. I don't really understand why these things are more popular than message boards, I guess they work better on phones or something. Aside from that, I have no idea!
 

GCX

Member
Oct 27, 2017
483
Message boards peaked in early 00s. Back then you could find a forum for absolutely anything, but they've pretty much all died years ago. For niche topics, a more instant form of communication like Discord is probably better because the number of people contributing is so small.

That doesn't mean there wouldn't be need for a forum like ResetEra anymore. It offers more in-depth discussion about gaming for a large community, and I don't see the need for it going away anytime soon.
 

Palculator

Member
Oct 24, 2017
242
Germany
Different media. It's like IM vs. E-Mail. Transient and unstructured vs. something persistent and more orderly. They serve different purposes.
 

Skyfireblaze

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,257
Reading this topic I'm sort of glad I'm not the only one who feels that Discord is too fast and hard to follow.

Message boards are asynchronous communication, Discord is synchronous. Message boards have generally been killed by things like Facebook and Twitter. Discord has replaced things like AIM and IRC.

Your post made me wonder about something, I don't use Facebook at all because I have no need for it and only made an account there to transfer my Final Fantasy Brave Exvius account data to a new phone but with the format being as popular as it is I wonder if eventually a "Facebook for Gamers" type of thing will crop up. Discord specifically targeted gamers (at first?) and it worked pretty well for them so I'm curious how that one would work out. On a much smaller scale MyAnimeList is something like a Facebook / Message Board mix for anime and manga fans and that seems to fare pretty well too.
 

AlexBasch

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,310
I see it and have no fucking idea how it works. I just log here, write stupid shit and read more stuff from other people. I'm keeping the forums, thanks.

I remember joining a room for Destiny and Diablo, because "GEE YOU CAN PLAY WITH ERA USERS, THE BEST OF THE INTERNET!"

Then I got ignored every time I tried to ask something or join a game, which maybe it's my fault, because I don't get how the fuck it works.
 

Skyfireblaze

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,257
I see it and have no fucking idea how it works. I just log here, write stupid shit and read more stuff from other people. I'm keeping the forums, thanks.

I remember joining a room for Destiny and Diablo, because "GEE YOU CAN PLAY WITH ERA USERS, THE BEST OF THE INTERNET!"

Then I got ignored every time I tried to ask something or join a game, which maybe it's my fault, because I don't get how the fuck it works.

That was my experience in a few servers I'm in aswell and it really left me headscratching, atleast for some communities I feel they expect you to be a regular and know everything right from the get go.
 

Dust

C H A O S
Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,230
Discord seems like the unhealthy trend of discussing something 24/7 and obsessing over everything.
Also echochambers.
 

Noisepurge

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,479
Discord is realtime, it replaces the LFG posts on our OT's but does not replace the topics in general.
 

Ferny

FutureERA
Member
Oct 23, 2017
658
There are a lot of super active forums out there funny enough. Communities that most people don't even think of have huge boards to this day. I think Discord is a very good supplement to forums tho. Even small communities might be better off in a Discord server. There's no cost and super simple to setup.

I use both, of course. Discord mainly discussions with some buddies of mine and a couple ERA communities.
 

Weltall Zero

Game Developer
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
19,343
Madrid
That place still exists!? Holy shit O.o

*Checks*..... Wow.

I find it hard to believe you've ever searched for videogame stuff and not got GameFAQs hits, they're pretty much always in the first page (if not the first hit) whenever I google something I want to know about a game.

Whether these hits are of any use is another matter...
 

Jamaro

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,281
I tend to just pop on discussion forums once a day or every couple days to see what the latest news is, and I don't see how something that is close to a chat room could replace that. I like the ability to backtrack through a thread to see how the conversation progresses, and I like that a forum is indexed and easily searchable whether through its built in search feature or Google.

I haven't used Discord but I can't imagine how it is a message board replacement. Seems like it serves a purpose of its own, which I guess in turn could result in less people frequenting message boards. I imagine there are plenty who would prefer this slower, check at your leisure format though.
 

Crumb

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,043
398318781178576897.png
 

Falchion

Member
Oct 25, 2017
40,937
Boise
Discord is between Twitch chat and a forum. I don't like the lack of archiving or finding anything relevant.
 

IwazaruK7

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,155
Surely Discord isnt comfortable for keeping and organizing information, because discord group is basically a pack of several chats, and they didnt even had search function for a long time before they added.

Facebook groups lack functionality too, and /r/eddit is against discussing old stuff (old threads aut-locked forever, so you need to make new thread and perhaps loose what was already written before never learn about that).

Classic forums are the best, with subforums/categories, threads-for-each-topic, advanced useful search engine etc.

edit:
vanilla forums engine is not your friend, they strip down forum functions (tags instead of subforums, cant really search etc.)

Facebook Groups are what matters nowadays

they cant even search comments, it only searches opening post, not mentioning stuff like "by user name.."

Reddit is absolutely a forum. It's a radically different style of forum compared to a classic one, but it has way more in common with normal forums than Discord or Twitter do.

Doesn't count due to anti-usage simplifications. Though thankfully it has threads, unlike imageboards they are not deleted etc. *pain of scrolling the whole discord chat dealing with like 8 subdiscussions at once which could have been several different threads instead*
 
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Kadey

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
6,672
Southeastern PA
I think it's killing everything. Everybody is slowly starting to use it. You'll still have big places like Reddit but they are moderated where as in Discord the person creating the channel sets the rules.
 

AgentLampshade

Sweet Commander
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,309
Eh I'm not a fan of Discord or chat in general. I prefer this more laid-back setting. Less pressure to type quickly.
 

DekuBleep

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,712
Message boards still have a purpose. Reddit is doing fine.

Discord has taken a lot of traffic.

But well moderated message boards are still better for having an actual discussion.