When Casuals go 2D

Much talk can be found on the blogosphere about the meaning (and lack thereof) of the words casual and hardcore. Euripedes of Critical QQ wants to abolish these terms altogether while Arioch over on Clearcasting proposes a scale of seriousness instead. There used to be a discussion over at WoWRadio that casual and hardcore don't exist anymore because guilds like Ensidia often spend less time playing than your average raiding guild - just because they are so good.
Do you see the issue here?

Motivating Raiders: Part 3 - Respect

This is the third (and for now final) part of my series on Fear, Love, and Respect. Check out parts one and two as well as the original article if you like.
Today we will talk about what I consider the most important tool of a raid leader, respect, and how to achieve it.

Motivating Raiders: Part 2 - Love

Welcome to the second follow-up to my Fear, Love, Respect post. Since the first instalment was about fear, it should be quite obvious that today I'm going to to talk about love. There are many definitions of love, but I will only refer to a very specific subset here. But don't worry, the post is still longer than anyone would like it to be.

Motivating Raiders: Part 1 - Fear

I got feedback from a few people that they enjoyed my Fear, Love, Respect post but missed a part about practical application. The following sequels will attempt to remedy that by detailing ways in which you can achieve each of the three and what consequences that may have. I originally meant for it to be only one sequel but well, it got somewhat big, so we are only dealing with fear today. Love and respect will follow.
If you haven't read the post I linked above, please do that or wait for the other parts of this series before you imply that I suggest ruling by fear alone - I don't.

Fear, Love, Respect

Some of you may be familiar with the works of Italian philosopher Machiavelli and others will at least have heard of him. I'm not going to argue for or against machiavellianism here, but his below quote will get us started on the discussion of how a raid (or guild) leader will get her raiders to do as she says. This is a similar topic to the one I tackled in 7 Different Shades of Stupid but this time I'm approaching it more from a philosophical point of view than a hands-on one.