TeamSpeak 3

Before switching to Discord, Max was pushing for the friend group to use TeamSpeak 3 over Skype. His main reason was that TS3 is a purpose-built solution for the communication the group wanted to do on Skype. Skype was prone to use a lot of system resources and shared screens would cause severe lag for those with poor-performing devices. TS3 avoided all of these problems and had better voice quality than Skype, though it lacked the functionality for sharing video. Another issue with Skype was its common poor connection issues as the "servers" used for calls were not dedicated, but TS3 avoided this problem.

Attempts
A few attempts were made and a few TS3 servers were started. None of them ever achieved a true user base and were normally discontinued within a month. Discord now offers the benefits that TS3 provided, and the only feasible reason one would now want to switch to TS3 is if they disagreed with the Discord company. Otherwise, the free price tag of Discord's ever-expanding features list has set the friend group's usage of it in stone.