Unlike Disqus, this will only effect new posts, so old story threads with 5000 comments will be untouched.
Some of the new things Disqus adds:
- Threaded Comments
- Sort by Date/Activity/Ect
- Twitter/Facebook logins
- Voting
- Reputation Scores
- And a bunch of other random stuff.
As with all EQD Comment excursions, it is recommended that you backup any large ones you don't want to lose. We may end up reverting back, and unlike Disqus, intense debate doesn't sync new comments into the blogger database.
If you do not want to use your facebook/twitter, the best option for Intense Debate is... Intense Debate! That's right, they have their own comment setup. You can create an account for it here. This will allow you to use whatever profile image you want, a well as a bunch of other tweaks.
Until blogger fixes their randomly missing widgets and other issues, we will probably have to roll with this! Their massive revamps are breaking all sorts of things. Honestly, EQD was sort of in the stone age anyway.