Disclaimer: WoW is my first MMORPG and so my thought process may not be in line with your hardcore MMORPG people out there, but nevertheless.. feel free to share your thoughts.

How do you generally encourage discussion in your raid group or say even within your guild. Because to me it seems like in most guilds I have been in only 15-20% engage in discussions or talk in gchat and during raid its even poor. I am not an officer but I am sure that our officers do some /O chat during raids discussing strats, but then again rarely does anyone in raid group offer any suggestion or speak out their thoughts in raid channel as to what they think went wrong in the last attempt and stuff like that. I don't know if they are afraid that they would get snapped by others or what not.

Most times I see many people log in, raid, get or don't get loot and go do their thing and log off. I really wish there is something the officers or anyone could do to create a more comfortable atmosphere for everyone to participate and offer their input and not just robotically follow orders.

What I wouldnt give for a raid that robotically followed orders :)

haah that may be a problem if you're trying new bosses with your own strats, because people need to flexible and adjust accordingly. me thinks.

Two words: "Sexual Inuendo"

It takes time.

EJ is very different from other guilds so our casual, friendly attitude (outside of molten core) comes from how the guild was put together from the ground up.

It helps to have a guild leader as friendly and humourous as Beef, master of pawrry.

Well, that depends on the nature of the guild. In some guilds, you're expected to quietly follow orders and, if you aren't an officer, you just dick around, look at the boss room, then do your job and get your epix. In others, things are different.

I used to be in End of Legends and, as you probably know, for the most part, we were kept in the dark... information on strats and such trickled down to us from the officers, but other than that, it was more or less a one-way street. We did what we were told and we did our jobs well. When the strats worked, we steamrolled stuff. When things went wrong, fingers were pointed. Of course, all kinds of drama happened and the guild fragmented. Me, I burned out on the guild's schedule (you wouldn't believe the rescheduling I had to do to make an EST raid schedule) and left a few days before the guild split and Disrupted formed, but honestly, EoL wasn't a friendly guild (a whole lot of people didn't like each other) and I'd be surprised if Disrupted was a friendly guild either being cut from more or less the same cloth (hopefully the scapegoating issue has been fixed by guild leadership).

But that's the WoW end-game on Gilneas (Horde side, at least) for you. Outside of DHoC, my friends list and the guild list were very much separate entities and that's the way it seems to be for a lot of (I wouldn't be surprised if it was most of) the people in the end-game raiding guilds. Anyway, my point is that you have to choose between having a friendly guild environment and participating in the end game. You cannot have both. Many people in EoL... hell, even our old guild, the Laughing Stock, barely tolerated each other. I know people who are in Disrupted who despised the guys who are leading Disrupted now back when we were all in EoL.

But to get back to your main point, some guilds lead by committee, others take a top-down approach where the officiers don't really take much feedback from the members. Disrupted and EoL are very much the latter type.

what works for any given guild is entirely dependant on the people in that guild and their attitudes/motivations. some guilds are built on friendship and mutual respect. some are built merely on concurrent goals and motivations. no single formula works to satisfy diverse groups of people.

except porn. everyone likes porn.

Part of this is in relation to this post I made in the Guild Management and Leadership thread that was all the rage a few weeks ago.

We have certain players who are very strong players who step up to the ball, research future content, learn their shit, and do their best to contribute to strat-forming etc.

We have other players who, though, despite being very strong players, don't seem to feel comfortable sharing their information with the raid as a whole.

Disrupted is a very friendly guild, as a whole, and the people in the guild are willing to help each other as guild-members should, etc. It's no longer a PUG, it's a community. The trouble is that some of those players who have "matured", so to speak, aren't as willing to move into the active content discussion part of the community, and that saddens me.

EDIT: Just out of curiosity, how many times, in a given 5-hr raid, do you use the /raquiet command, on average?

there's a /raquiet command? wtf?

Allows only those promoted to speak in raid chat.

Goddamn, I didnt even know something like that existed. Next time raidchat descends into drunken sexual deviancy (aka MC), I'll give it a whirl.

It's /rasquelch I believe. It lets you party chat still, but not raid chat

Never. /gkick is much easier to type.

/gdisband is the only true solution for an emo leader however.

Hah, we're always on Ventrilo. Mere /rasquelch commands cannot stop our madness!