Online communities have different homes. At Stream Hatchet, we focus on exploring live-streaming platforms where streamers and their viewers both shape and reflect the popularity of different trends. But this is just one node in a vast, interconnected world of forums, servers, and other meeting places: What could game publishers and brands learn by combining live-streaming insights with those from other communities?
Like, say, Discord.
On Discord, users with shared interests can easily find and connect with each other in a more organic fashion, directly interacting through voice chat. And (though we hesitate to say it) Discord has a massive advantage over live-streaming platforms: Members of a shared server often feel on even footing with one another. It’s no surprise, then, that brands and game publishers want a view into how their products are being discussed and promoted on Discord servers.
And that’s where our guest poster for today steps in: Dashscored. We’ll let their team take it from here…
Communities on the VRGE: A New View into Discord – by Andrew Molchany from Dashscored
Anticipation is a double-edged sword. Some of the fastest growing and most engaged servers this holiday season were around games with expected releases any minute. Fans were hungry for updates!
But some other games focus on long staying power: Their associated Discords have stabilized at lower overall membership numbers, with the priority being continued peer-community engagement rather than anticipation-building.
Discord users usually check out servers based on whether they’re into their topics, but they all have different feels. At Dashscored, we use a multi-server analytics bot to go deeper than these surface level motivations and individual habits. We’ve recently released a new way to think about Discord communities – a multi-dimensional system based on vibe, reach, growth & engagement (hence, VRGE).
Check out the VRGE Leaderboards from Dashscored here.
With our bot on your server or network of servers, you can get deep insights into how your community is trending.
Even without our bot, we’ve applied a lightweight version of the VRGE framework to create a leaderboard across nearly five thousand servers with public invites.
Vibe is anything related to the tone and topics of the conversation, not just if it’s friendly or toxic, but also if it’s more competitive or collaborative, highly political left or right, feels official vs. fan-driven, etc.
Reach is simply the membership size of the community server.
Growth is the size trend over time, which can show patterns like steady growth, big bursts, churn vs. stability, and net decline. Most servers show distinct periods of rapid growth, and these metrics help moderators find and understand those key periods.
Engagement metrics are all related to how active members are, both on Discord and, if you have Dashscored’s bot installed, specifically on your server’s channels.
Similar to TV or movie ratings, Dashscored will flag a number of categories. For example, here’s a large profile picture server that Dashscored automatically flags as mature/nsfw.
That one is obvious, but other flags indicate if servers look political, non-collaborative, commercial, exclusive, or narrowly focused.
Dashscored’s ‘exclusive’ flag doesn’t necessarily mean people aren’t allowed in, but rather that the server caters to a very specific audience more than a general crowd. For example, this Bitcoin-focused server is flagged as ‘exclusive’ and ‘narrowly focused’ but could be just what you’re looking for.
Examples of Popular Discord Communities
Playing around with the leaderboards leading into the holidays, our team identified eight intriguing and fairly large communities with high levels of recent growth, engagement in the chat, and/or welcoming vibes. Neither Dashscored nor Stream Hatchet can attest to the actual membership experience on these servers, but based on their VRGE metrics they stand out as examples of currently successful Discord communities.
Popular RPG servers tend to have high levels of engagement, and here are a handful that caught our eye – some for long-established games, and a couple of new ones:
Fellowship: The official Discord of this new title (playing in early access) with over 125,000 members, is not exactly a discovery, but was highlighted on the leaderboard by proactively creating a positive, collaborative vibe and seeing rapid growth of engaged members. The Arc team (the game’s publisher) explicitly invites feedback on development as well as open discussion, group creation and sharing of tactics.
ClicksenseRP: A Spanish-language FiveM (GTA V roleplay) server launched in April 2023 that now has about 11,000 members, where “la experiencia de juego se fusiona con la creatividad ilimitada de nuestra comunidad” (“the game experience combines with the boundless creativity of our community”).
MapleStorySEA: With over 11,000 members and a high level of activity, this server just hit its 9th anniversary in November and claims to be the largest community-led MapleStory South-East Asia server. Besides the expected resource guides, conversation, and occasional giveaways, members also appear to organize physical gatherings and outings in the region. (MapleStory is one of the original side-scrolling MMORPGs).
Soulframe: Another buzzy one, this is the official Discord for the highly anticipated release from Digital Extremes. The server has been around since 2022, but has lately grown rapidly to 135,000 members, no doubt growing in the run up to its originally anticipated 2025 release date.
WAKFU: Ankama’s official server for their MMORPG, this 12,000-member server has been online since 2019 and continues to welcome players of all levels for general conversation, Q&A about gameplay, sharing opinions about updates, and finding other players for groups.
Another tranche of highly engaged community members is Anime-themed:
Anime Vanguards Trading Hub: This Discord community coverage wouldn’t be complete without a massive Roblox server, but we’re not talking here about the million-member official Discord server. The Trading Hub is a busy 30,000-member server that stresses trusted moderation to keep interactions safe and spammers out.
Pocket Anime: This server’s growth (over 140,000 members) coincides with the November release of the game’s Phase 2 trailer. There’s an existing fanbase for the open-world creature collecting game and crossover buzz on YouTube and Reddit surrounding the Phase 2 drop. This one is very much a hype machine, and even the server invite is monetized. By Dashscored’s definitions, that’s a bit of a vibe kill.
We also wanted to highlight an indie studio leveraging Discord to build its community:
AdHoc Studio: AdHoc’s barely-year-old Discord now has nearly 43,000 members watching the updates on Dispatch, their interactive ‘superhero workplace comedy’. The Discord invites members to share fan art and discuss any of their favorite interactive narrative games, not just AdHoc’s, which helps with the community-centered vibe.
Further Insights Into Discord Communities
If you find this kind of Discord community insight interesting, check out more of what we do at Dashscored.com: We offer deep multi-server analytics including level of engagement, sentiment, topics, and chat summarization, impact of events on member behavior and more via an installable bot, with a free base level.
From our network of full-service bots, we also gleaned a couple extra insights in the lead-up to the holiday season that we wanted to share.
The first one is just funny: Call it a bug or call it a feature, but Discord continues to recognize “Wallpaper Engine” as a game, and it rode right up the holiday leaderboard. It was the 6th most played game in Dashscored’s supported servers in December 2025, up from 8th in October 2025 and 17th in November 2024.
Secondly, Roblox surged to the #1 most played title among Discord Activities, just edging out Fortnite which was the far-and-away leader last year. Fortnite had more staying power than Marvel Rivals, though, which was at #2 in December 2024 but dropped to 11th this season (just below Wordle at #10). That’s a testament both to the durability of Fortnite and also the value of easy access as a Discord Activity.
Game studios should take note that an activity version of their game provides great discoverability by reaching friends of current players.
Closing Thoughts from Stream Hatchet
As you can see, Dashscored’s team is providing groundbreaking insights into Discord communities. We wanted to give a little more insight into their company for anyone interested in reaching out:
Dashscored delivers high-leverage fan community analytics via Discord. By bridging the data gap between moderation and development teams, Dashscored automates multi-server insights that make it easier to grow an authentic community and faster to iterate product and content updates.
Dashscored was incubated at Stride, Inc., a major edtech company based in Virginia, to manage their Esports communities and has grown to serve global clients in community gaming, indie and AAA game development, brand partnerships, membership organizations and universities all using Discord.
Learn more about Dashscored at: www.dashscored.com
And connect with the team at: Select a Date & Time – Calendly
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