• Fancy layout and theme
• Easy to understand. Receive a Discord link and it’ll ask you to download Discord or join using their web app.
• Media support (images, gifs, videos, sounds), Youtube embed, etc
• Easy to make your own server. Click 5 things and you have one.
• Voice chat with screenshare and even party games
• Free (but ofcourse they steal your data)
• Channels purely for pinning and sharing information. Including channels that look more like a forum.
• No need to remake an account on all the servers.
• And a lot more.

People want something else though because Discord is very bad privacy wise. They keep shoving their premium features in your face. Have horrible support and can ban for an out of context “i’m 10 years old”. (Even if the next message is “i’m joking”). They have been known to share information about protest organizers with governments, take an extremely long amount of time to remove malicious and predatory servers. And so much more.

People want something that can offer them the comfort of Discord, with the freedom of IRC.