At this point, the message editor should be a(n optional) WYSIWYG

I love the number of formatting features there are for messages in Discord. Hyperlinks, lists, headings, and all the other basic text formatting really enhances the user experience. The only problem is that users are forced to use Markdown syntax to take advantage of this. I can recall many times in the past where friends of mine simply didn't know that they could format their text in certain ways because of how obscure some of it is. I know that you can apply formatting to highlighted text via a context menu, but that is obscure too and, honestly, kind of ineffective.

My suggestion is to take a hint from Slack and put a WYSIWYG (AKA rich text editor) into the message box. I would also highly recommend making it togglable like Reddit's post editor, so users who are already used to Markdown formatting don't get screwed over. This would make all the available formatting options clearly visible and easily available to the user.