My primary guild has always traditionally worked with raiding alliances -- that is, two or more guilds who agree to raid together. It tends to go pretty well for us, since we happen to be a large group of relatively highly skilled players. What's more, we're packing all the healers, tanks and key buffs required to make a raid get up and go. We usually top the theoretical DPS for our progression levels and really just need to make enough friends to keep our raids full. It's a pretty good position to be in, if you're going to be setting up a raiding alliance. But, it doesn't always go so smoothly.

Don't get me wrong. If you take the time to talk to applicants, make sure they know the rules of the group and have a general idea of how to do their dance steps, then things usually go smoothly. And since the dozen or so of the core group are doing most of the heavy lifting, there's not a whole lot that can go wrong. But sometimes, just sometimes, you get that one dude who's just completely off the rails.

They can be a perfectly awesome player. Skilled, geared and knowledgeable. But they just won't shut up. You can beg, cry, bargain, plead, demand, threaten and cajole for them to tone their behavior down. But everything they say is offensive, and they like to say a whole lot of it.

So how do you deal with this? Dealing with an obnoxious raid member is a little different than dealing with an obnoxious guild member, because there's an entire additional issue of immediacy. You have to handle this guy now, on the raid, before it progresses into something that disrupts your ability to kill bosses.

The puppy biting method

I have a 4-month-old puppy. While she's a light in my life, she does have a small issue. She bites. I'm told, technically, this is called "mouthing." She doesn't mean anything by it; she's just teething and rambunctious and doesn't know any better. But I can't whack her with a newspaper or something, because then she's as likely to learn to be afraid of me as she is to learn biting is bad. For that matter, the newspaper treatment is just more roughhousing, and all I'd be doing is feeding her energy and riling her up more.

Not to make an unfair comparison between my puppy and obnoxious raid members, but I'm going to make that comparison. Not all obnoxious raid puppies are misbehaving out of spite or meanness. Instead, they just don't know any better. They're excited and a little off-kilter. In their excitement, they're saying things that are annoying to other raid members.

When my puppy nips, I ignore her. I don't spank her or anything, I just withdraw my affection. My affection means the world to her, and she's caught on that if she does something I don't like ... I ignore her.

When a raid member is running off at the mouth, he's looking to engage with someone. Ignore him. Just as you shouldn't feed the trolls, don't feed the antics of a raid member who just seems to constantly be freaking out. If you argue with the person, he's going to want to argue back. Heck, even perfectly rational people sometimes argue out of a sense of frustration or anger; with someone who might be a little wacky anyway, it'll be even worse. Just don't feed their worked-up and out-of-line mojo.

Hopefully, this least confrontational method will get the point across to the subversive raid member. They'll get the hint that they're out of line when no one is responding to their antics, and they'll quickly start behaving.

The quiet whisper method

You're next best option is to quietly send the raid member a whisper and tell him, politely, that you believe he's out of line. However, I wouldn't recommend using language like "You're out of line," or "What the heck were you thinking?" Telling someone something like "you're wrong" is one of the best ways to pick a fight; your target will want to defend himself.

Instead, say something like, "Let's focus on the raid; I think we're getting distracted" or "Let the raid leader speak now, so that we're all on the same page." Your goal isn't necessarily to gag the obnoxious raid member, because you could just put them on ignore. In its place, you are trying to refocus their energy where it should be -- facilitating a high performance in the raid.

This is obviously a fairly direct confrontation and not everyone will be comfortable with it. That's why you need to focus on the positive aspects ("Let's focus") instead of the negative ones ("You are out of line"). Sure, it might be satisfying to have an argument, but that's not your goal -- the success of the raid is your goal.

Have the raid leader handle it

I've almost never seen a situation in which someone's really riling up the raid, and there's only one person bothered. And since the raid leader is concerned with protecting the success of the raid, he or she will want to know there's a problem, if he doesn't already.

It's pretty tempting to think of this as being a tattletale or a thin-skinned complainer. But if you're having an honest problem, you should talk to the raid leader about it instead of springing it on him when you spontaneously decide to bail on his group.

Of course, if you can wait until after raid and during downtime, then you should do that. But if for whatever reason, this obnoxious person's behavior is bothering you so much that you just can't ride it out, then go ahead and talk to the raid leader about it immediately. As I said, it's likely you aren't the only one bothered. But you definitely shouldn't just post a snippy goodbye in raid chat and leave. Have enough respect for the 24 other people raiding alongside you to give the raid leader a chance to mitigate the behavior.

If you think you might be the obnoxious person ...

Cut it out and just have fun in the raid.

Good hunting, folks.