Are there any raiding guilds that do not require Discord?

Wait, we're talking about voice chat? You can't beat OoW without zoning into Discord!

I wish people would not use it, my list of reasons:
- I have young children who do not need to hear the sexual fantasy of every frustrated middle aged man in the guild. Not a night goes by without a or joke. Being a father of two, some of the jokes I hear make it very clear that some people on discord have never actually seen or interacted with a in either recreational or medical capacity.
- While racial slurs are a part of human life, I do not trust my children to comprehend them and understand that the vast majority of the time using them will have dire consequences. Included in this list are the usual anti-gay and misogynistic insults.
- Putting a headset on means I am also not able to clearly hear what my children are getting up to in their own online adventures, which I do need to know about.
- The headset also cuts me off from my family, who I am otherwise able to interact with while we deal with loot for the Nth time.
- Raid instructions given verbally are lost. If I am not there or distracted when given, I will not know what to do. If they are in chat, I can (and always do) read through all the information from the last moment I checked.
- Stupid people give instructions like "ok everyone come stand by me". Who is me? Where are you? Gradually you learn some of the voices, but some people just sound alike. Also "me" may be different depending on who is boxing what.
- I don't care about neckbeards or faux hotties. Most people I play with are middle aged men, and a few long suffering women. I accept that the best days are behind both. That's real life, but let's face it, guilds are alliances of convenience. We do not vet each other, we come together by happenstance. I do not necessarily care to invite everyone I guild with into my home. In fact there are a number of people I would not invite into my home for money, although they are fine players.

That said, every guild I've seen uses discord or some other voice thing. The battle is lost, and apparently typing quickly and succinctly is a lost art.

Wow so the proper names of wieners and veejays are filtered. What a world we live in where the ACTUAL names for organs are censored, but I can use any of a million crude substitutes freely.

This was the final nail for me.

I returned from whence I came. The EQ community is a better place for it I am sure by a large number of quantitative measures.
“So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.”

-Kabama

It amazes me how many people just have no communication skills what so ever.

I mean, I get it. Leading a guild and/or raid is a lot of work. I did it on Everquest, World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, and Age of Conan (among others). I got to the point where I just wouldn't log in at times because it felt more like a job than entertainment. The thing is, I realized it wasn't for me, and stopped putting others through the pain of dealing with my leadership lol.

This is my biggest complaint with voice chat. I'm bad with names, at the best of times. Trying to associate a rarely heard voice with a barely remembered name in the middle of a raid gets problematic. Putting hard limits on who gets to talk during a raid helps (especially while setting up for an encounter and during the fight). In the guild where I did most of my raiding, voice chat was limited to raid-related stuff. Important stuff also got sent to /rsay. General chatter, whether non-raid or non-eq, went to /gu (with some leeway during breaks, like traveling to the next encounter).

Just mute everyone but the essential raid leaders.

I would like to remain anonymous so I will say I raid with a guild that is top 3 server wide in terms of progression.
That said, I am profoundly deaf and I log into discord so that I can receive messages from people and let them know I am there more or less in spirit.
I don't think they even know I am deaf and if you know the content there is no need really to listen to them depending on your class...
Follow the leader and do as they do and don't fu&^ up

Like Ethereal, I didn't use voice comms until about PoP on release, and I hated it back in 2002. When I came back to Ragefire I was real resistant to it, but every raid leader required it. Being a female in gaming plays a part in this resistance, but also, like you, I like the sounds of the game itself and I can get distracted between what's going on in game and voices that aren't part of the game.

HOWEVER, I wholeheartedly support voice comms now. The key is to keep things *pertinent* during raid time. Raid leaders (those on the tool, loot, strat, class leaders--cleric/warrior rotation, chanters, main assist, etc) should have voice priority. In Cor Tempus we also keep it "family friendly" and politics free, as many of our members are playing EQ in the same room as their family and do not like it when profanity flies around younger ears.

We don't require people to talk on voice comms, but they do need to be able to listen (if they can hear). I do believe it makes the raiding experience run more smoothly as we can talk a lot faster than we type, and there's less chance for misunderstanding. (A favorite from raiding on Prexus was our raid leader typing "ROTATOE" instead of "ROTATE" or "CORPLE" instead of "CIRCLE").

If my groupmates want to use it, I follow what the group wants, but if it starts delving too much into "chatter" I sometimes have to leave because my ability to play my character deteriorates. But I'm just as happy not using voice comms in group play.

So find a guild that has voice comm rules. It's OK to have fun but everyone has to recognize that when the raid leader/officers tells us to go pertinent we do it. Our leaders have ZERO problem moving someone out of the channel if they repeatedly cuss or don't keep it to raid commands only.

I LOVE raiding now, and I think disciplined voice comms are part of that reason (obviously having awesome raid leaders is the top reason raiding is fun).

Council of Defiance is a small raiding guild and not all of our members utilize discord this is completely acceptable to us as long as you understand the fight and the mechanics. If you would like to chat more message Fullheala in game

Oh, so not OGC.

forget Agnarr and ragefire and starting as if your back in 1999

Come join Luclin server and Guild Cestus Dei for a good and fun experience

amen to that

agreed!

omg you are my hero, agreed again! Also "Heal me!" or "Buff me!" without a name given

haha long suffering women.

Personally I would not be playing this silly old game if it were not for Teamspeak and chatting with friends I have known for years while collecting pixels. It seems you have other real life requirements that make it hard for you to be in a raid guild period, which is perfectly fine. You maybe better off playing WoW and queuing using their Looking for Raid tool and just auto Que with people you don't know or have to communicate with, while you take care of your kids.

Good for you, I'm here to kill dragons. I don't care about the social scene. If you want to chat with your friends while you raid, great, go for it. Discord has personal channels as well as group channels. I'll chat with my family via free air in my house. All I need to do my job properly as a participant is receive the key commands necessary to to coordinate with the raid. All I need as a leader is a medium I can expect people to receive and respond to. We used to do this all the time in chat, it worked fine.

It seems like the summary of this thread is that people are using Discord or workalikes in the majority, but are not necessarily using it in a helpful way. People are being muted, the whole thing is being muted in favor of TV shows, headsets are coming off, cross chatter over social BS is interfering with raid communication, etc.. It seems like we've replaced the reliable medium of chat with an unreliable medium where you cannot be sure you're being heard.

I personally enjoy Discord and voice comms. A lot of the complaints here while valid can be fixed if people would just not deal with what you don't want to deal with. If something bothers you about someone or something in comms speak up (not during the raid) and let people know. If you express how much of a problem it is and leadership does nothing then it's on you to leave. Unless you value the loot more then deal with it by muting people.

Unless you are in one of those top 10 world-wide kind of guilds they are easily replaceable. Weather Live or TLP there are plenty of guild out there and you settling for some place you don't want to be for loot, friends, or history is on you. Having been in plenty of raiding guilds and in a leadership role in several others not every player meshes with every guild. I will not change the culture of a guild's voice comms to accommodate a couple people as well as if I was a lone member I would not expect them to accommodate me.

The OP is seeking a guild which does not use Discord which is great but a lot of these posts slagging "this one guild" is silly. Be a big boy, girl, or attack helicopter and speak up or leave. No need for hard feelings it just wasn't a good fit and move on.

I think that for some people (myself included), even if you find people and behaviors you don't like in your current guild, there are some people in that guild that you consider friends, and you don't want to leave because it basically means you are leaving those friends as well.

In my own experience, this has lead to some situations where I stayed in guilds too long that I should have left, and what ended up happening is over time I got very bitter because of all the things I was bottling up inside. Then inevitably, there's that one thing that tips the scale, and instead of just being civil about it, all that pent up anger comes flying out in a rage inducing epic leaving of said guild that you end up feeling really bad about later, but the damage is already done.

Most of which could of been avoided if you heeded the advise mentioned. Don't get me wrong I think we have all been there a time or two in the past but I have been playing online games such as Everquest for almost 20 years now. I have learned that it is never worth settling for a guild that is not within your annoyance threshold. I am still very good friends with people who no longer play this game or even play games anymore. Nothing is stopping you from maintaining your friendship if you leave a guild you can't stand.

my personal recommendation is to just mute everyone