Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog

I recently found out that an old guild Vent had lapsed, I hadn’t logged into it for a while, I’ve used skype more lately or Msn voice or another vent then the old guild Vent.  For a while it had been a place where the ex guildys could log in, and sometimes hear a familiar voice and catch up on what ever adventures we had been up to – playing wow or not.

That I hadn’t logged in for so long was testament to how much it had lapsed – and yes it needed people to keep paying for it to stay up, and I had paid for 2 months – but had forgotten how long ago that was, it’s no ones fault, just wasn’t being used enough for people to care – myself included.

The vent had been rented out to new people – and it was a tad upsetting to see all the channels gone.

My own private channel that I had named “The Charlatans”  gone…

I logged in  expecting to see remnants of in-guild jokes, and channels named after people, for people, private channels and the standard raiding & pvp channels . I ended up in a lobby. I always meant to screen shot our Vent channels, and write a post about it, because you can tell a lot about a guilds personality and structure by their vent channels.  Their interests, how social they are, what other games they play ect.

I had recently added Non Elitist Raiding Diary to my reading list, and read their post Voip Culture  and agree completely that how your vent is set up can affect guild interactions and how bonds are formed with people on there.  Topics she covers like ,  like how many channels there are,   how many are passworded and  people who use binds all add up to a Voip culture that can affect  “the way your Guild glues together’

In contrast to the guild I am in now – the old one was very chatty.  Or maybe it was me that was chatty, but every day before raid or in raid channel until raid started someone was always talking, and I miss the epic conversations.

I find it eerie now to be sitting in a raiding channel  waiting for the raid to start, and there be silence, or even when one person speaks something as simple as Hi Guys – be lucky to get one response, but different guilds have different cultures, and some work better different ways, and not everyone wants to talk to people.  I like talking. I like communicating. I am quiter now then I probably have ever been.

    I’ve been in guilds where people weren’t ‘allowed’ in vent unless it was raid time and ones where there was someone pretty much someone online 24/7  -where friends and raiders from other guilds were welcome 

But things that  None  Elitist Raider’s blog post  made me consider  about exclusivity was  that even in our chatty guild,  when Aion came out the people playing Aion sat in that channel as an exclusive club, probably making the people who weren’t playing  it feel a little excluded,  and I realise that even when I sat my own private channel talking to someone in my last raiding guild after raid, was probably not conductive to  keeping conversation open.