Teamspeak... Can the post-mortem begin?

[Gimpymoo]

Can we officially declare Teamspeak dead or are we still waiting for someone to turn off the life support?

Where did it go wrong?

Others came and went but Teamspeak held itself in a very high position at one point in time.

Gametracker listings show server numbers dropping consistently year on year.

Personally, the developers seemed the biggest problem. Never seemed like a "company" wanting to grow their product, just a bunch of kids who never grew up, thinking they were right, not listening to user feedback etc.

The archaic licensing system I am sure did not help but that was far from the reason for its demise.

The times change, gaming became mainstream and as such, Teamspeak was NEVER mainstream friendly and it failed to embrace web 2.0.

Teamspeak 3.0 final was relased in 2011. SEVEN years ago.

Thoughts?

 

[~>Dg<~]

use it everyday so do all my mates its dead all right . not all want to use discord. i use both but many i play or know either wont use discord for various reasons.maybe they stuborn or just dont like it. so TS has got a place still yet.

Discord free servers will obviously take a hit on server rentals.so its not surprising.

 

[wnb]

I used to use teamspeak a lot but then I had kids and left the clans behind, I floated around playing games and never found a new community until I decided to install Discord for the Division. Discord blew me away, it's everything that TS is not.

 

[Gimpymoo]

I decided to install Discord for the Division. Discord blew me away, it's everything that TS is not.

That is one of the problems.

People resist Discord (myself included) then one day you try it and people think... "Oh, this is refreshing" and the negatives are easily forgiven in most instances.

Not to turn this into a "TS Vs Discord" discussion, I am more interested in how Teamspeak failed keep its grip on the market.

 

[Evian]

TS was fine until Discord came about, So much better.

 

[Glanza]

Our guild still uses TS due to it being paid up till something stupid like 2021, most of us have switched to Discord but still have to use TS from time to time.

 

[Hotwired]

Well... there's free and then there's not free.

TS falls into the "not free" category and when there are totally free alternatives you can see the appeal.

Don't see why you're hand wringing over their market share though.

TS works fine.

I have TS, Discord and Mumble installed because it's no big deal to use any of these perfectly usable voice comms depending on who cares what we group up in.

These days Discord is also where my groups meet up because of the semi-permanent forum it has alongside the voice comms so you can organise in writing without having a website.

 

[linktoinsanity]

I still use a Teamspeak server I set up (for free) on my home server. Other than that I also use discord.

 

[Gimpymoo]

Don't see why you're hand wringing over their market share though.

As a gamer on a gaming discussion forum, I see no harm in asking thoughts on how a product/service which was once a market leader in a very dominant position finds itself no longer in that position and without even an apparent fight while losing significant share in a time when MORE people are gaming and using comms.

 

[Tombstone]

I and every guild/clan that I was in, used TS all the time, over the last few years though, one by one they've changed to using Discord and now every guild/clan that I'm involved with uses only Discord. These things work in patterns though, like the Friends Reunited, Myspace, Bebo, Facebook sort of thing, in time something else will come along and Discord will be dropped in favour of it.

Bit like the old days with IRC.

 

[Reppyboyo]

Both the Arma groups I'm with still use TS, mostly due to ACRE integration.

 

[SPG]

Ventrillo is where its at though.

 

[Begbie]

Discord is jut so much better.

 

[Randomface74]

My friends all still use TS. I don't rly mind either way, it just ain't broke so we don't fix it.

 

[Curlyriff]

I have been on discord for a little while and in that time there has been some good updated and integration with 3rd parties such as Spotify which was good to see. Works well enough and free.

 

[mikelkite]

My friends and I have been using Mumble for years. Lite weight, easy to setup, can add channels and some good mods on there.

Stopped using Team Speak years ago, (used to use roger wilco MANY years ago - Delta Force 2 days... those were the days)

I have no desire to use Discord, as I host my own mumble server with a simple subdomain and works perfectly.

 

[picnic]

Teamspeak 3.0 final was relased in 2011. SEVEN years ago.

I guess the people at TeamSpeak don't shout enough about releases then, there was a new version of the server released in the last week or 10 days. The client has requested an update at least once this year

 

[Gimpymoo]

I guess the people at TeamSpeak don't shout enough about releases then, there was a new version of the server released in the last week or 10 days. The client has requested an update at least once this year

I said when 3.0 was released which was indeed 2011. I was not refering to incremental updates.

What new features have been added in 7 years?

Even Ventrilo has had a title update to 4.0.

 

[Rroff]

One of the problems with TS has been how they've been restrictive about the back end TBH - the licensing, etc. really hasn't helped to promote its growth and they could have done a lot more API wise to facilitate the community making more advanced use of it.

Another problem with it is that it requires admin(s) who know what they are doing to get the same kind of features and functionality going that people like about Discord.

Personally I'm not a big fan of Discord - prefer my voice clients to be as purely functional as possible and it seems to have been developed for a generation of people who need someone else to hold their hand and tell them how they should behave and what to think.

 

[Glacius]

A group of us just starting playing on a classic WoW server and you need 40 people to raid, we have over 300 members in our guild and I setup a teamspeak server just to find that in order to have over 32 people on it you need to either pay for a license or declare you self as a no profit community and for this you need an active website/forum that they check manually and if found to not be active they decline your request for a non profit license which they did.....

After this and although I really didnt want to, we decided to switch to Discord which is unlimited numbers and completely free. So it was finally time to wave fairwell to Teamspeak. Why they have to do this 32 player limit and make you jump through so many hoops or pay is beyond me.