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Discord's creator is such a Final Fantasy 11 fan he essentially created the entire platform just to talk to friends while playing the MMO
The creator of Discord, Stanislav Vishnevskiy, was inspired to create the platform by his need to communicate with friends about Final Fantasy 11, showcasing the impact of MMOs on online communication and community building.
Square Enix's first stab at turning Final Fantasy into an MMO played a significant role in Discord coming to be, mainly as it gave creator Stanislav Vishnevskiy a space to chat about Final Fantasy 11.
Speaking to Famitsu (thanks, Siliconera), Vishnevskiy shares that the earliest versions of Discord came about when he was in school because he wanted a space to talk to his friends about Final Fantasy 11.
It wouldn't be until he met co-founder Jason Citron when taking a job at games developer GREE, though, that Discord really took off. The pair essentially took what Vishnevskiy was using and made it available to many, many more people.
Speaking about the idea behind making Discord as early as his FF11 days, Vishnevskiy acknowledges that Skype was already available but wanted something simpler that people could think of as a living room shared with friends.
As ever, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Discord is indeed being used by many more people than Vishnevskiy and his Final Fantasy 11-lovin' pals, but he remains a Final Fantasy devotee. Not only has he been playing FF11 for the past 10 years, but he's racked up plenty of time in the critically acclaimed MMO Final Fantasy 14, too – he even has the legacy mark to prove he was essentially there before A Realm Reborn wiped the troubled MMO's slate clean.
Such is Vishnevskiy's dedication to Final Fantasy 14 that he took a week off work to play the Dawntrail expansion. Since then, he has even leveled most jobs to 100. With a collaboration raid between FF14 and FF11 coming soon, dare I say, Vishnevskiy might have reason to take a little more time off. Final Fantasy and MMOs, it's a good combo.