Well, in my opinion Discord is incomparable with MSN/Windows Live Messenger. They follow a different way than same goal. Discord is based on IRC-chat, or it is a separated, modern IRC client with builtin many functions like voice call, filedrop and etc. Discord also uses channels, rooms, contact list, channel title and etc., like on IRC. Every channel starts with #.
Probably we can compare MSN to Skype. Skype became a better version of MSN or not? Good question 