Ventrilo has been a staple with The Gathering since our beginning in 2004 serving as our primary voice chat system for the group. I’m not sure if everyone was aware, but a Ventrilo server (that holds more than 8 people) is not free and has to be rented from an authorized Ventrilo reseller. Throughout the years, we have moved and rented from various companies, due to some places raising prices and/or going out of business. Here recently, the Ventrilo market has really dwindled and thus the few Ventrilo service resellers are less willing to make good rental deals.
With the emergence of newer free voice chat options, such as Discord and the newly released built-in Steam voice features, compounded with the fact that Ventrilo has done very little over the past 15 years as far as implementing any new features or evolving much further than the original concept, we have decided to part ways with Ventrilo.
The current system we have been testing for the past several months is Discord, which the direct link to our server can be found on our frontpage here. If you have not checked out Discord yet, I would encourage you to do so, as the set up is much easier than Ventrilo ever was, plus it integrates a chat system, displays and shows what game you are currently playing (similar to the old XFire system) and also offers a fully functional mobile phone app.
So hop on over to Discord and join in the fun all over again!