We have Final Fantasy 11 to thank for everything being on Discord, now—the app's co-creator made its prototype to talk strategy with his MMO buds

It feels a little like everything's on Discord, nowadays. A developer wants to share news about a game? Discord. Want to run a tabletop game? Discord. Want to organise a meet-up in the real world? I kid you not, Discord. I went to a coffee morning this weekend and was flashbanged with an ask for my Discord handle. It is inescapable.

It's not the best to have everything in one spot—it feels like I'm in as many servers as I have hair follicles nowadays, and while I'm waiting for the inevitable Ragnarök (the mythological apocalypse, not the game) of the app with worry, I can now tell you that we've at least, in part, got MMORPG Final Fantasy 11 to blame.

That's as per the app's co-creator and current CTO, Stanislav Vishnevskiy who, in an interview with Famitsu (thanks, Siliconera) revealed that the Discord we know, love, and have 40 servers perma-muted in for emojis was in fact inspired by Square Enix's first MMO (the following quotes are machine translated):

«When I was a student, I was obsessed with Final Fantasy 11, and I made something like a prototype of Discord as software that could be used while playing the game. From there, I moved to California and joined a company called GREE, where I met co-founder Jason Citron. I thought it would be nice to make the communication tool we created available to even more people, so I started developing Discord in earnest.»

I can't blame him for just deciding to make his own proto-Discord as a student. As a relatively young millennial, I remember the hallowed days of cassette tapes—as well as the ancient internet's chthonic gods: Teamspeak, Skype, and Ventrilo. They now lie in the bottom of the abyss, as Chronos slew his father, and Hades slew Chronos. Well, I mean, you can still use all three—but Discord's become the default.

I have a feeling that's because, while the progression from the days of dial-up has certainly made voice-chat simpler, Discord is so straightforward you can set up a server with your eyes closed. Trying