Discord has the momentum but overall I just find the experience awful. It would be nice to use anything else at this point. Joining a server with greater than a handful of people is just a nightmare and practically unusable.

Isn't this usually cause the admin went overboard? Like a server of 10 people has 30 channels, one of which is a lobby you have to clear first, and 10 bots telling you that you leveled up or whatever.

I think it depends on how the servers are setup. Chat channels with 1000s people participating are typically worthless as the signal to noise ratio ruins it.

But when the majority of conversations are happening in forums/thread style channels then it works well. You can still have some more niche chat style sections where typically 2-10 people participate

Chat channels are also fine for lots of people when its not about conversations but more just about sharing things. Like a "Share what you build" or "memes" channel work well as tons of messages are fine as you only care to see a few anyway.

Also limited size voice channels can be good aswell 5 people max.