mc.pathisorb.com

You can connect using a client like mIRC or the "In-game chat" link at the top of the website.

Server: mc.pathisorb.com

Port: 6697 (SSL)

Password: Pathis Orb Minecraft

Channel: #minecraft

Why Internet Relay Chat?

1.  It's a free, open-source protocol that can be hosted or accessed anywhere.  There is a multitude of server and clients, and anyone can make a new one.

2.  Resource usage of IRC clients is much lower than Discord; you can run a command-line IRC client in less than 10MB of memory (even graphical clients are relatively small), compared to Discord's hundreds of MB.

3.  IRC is truly server-owned.  A Discord "server" is never really your own -- it's technically owned by Discord and subject to their terms.

4.  It's been around for decades, and it's still being improved and updated.  It's probably never going away.