Haha I've never played WoW but that video is legendary! He became a massive 'celebrity' within the gaming world after that video right?
Are people really that serious when planning a raid or whatever that was? I can see why it's such a social game mind if you need teamwork like that to progress...
He did indeed become a
massive gaming celebrity, Blizzard even added an achievement into the game called "Leeeeeeeeeeeeeroy!" if you manage to kill all the whelps within 15 secs, this also gets you the title of "Jenkins" (so your character can become "Smashfist Jenkins" (assuming your char was called Smashfist)).
The guild i was in was very social. We had our own forum, our own teamspeak server, we arranged real life meet ups (for instance, one in London we had people comming in from Greece, Romania, Sweden, France and Germany for 2 days of drinking, another where we went over to Paris and spent a day in EuroDisney and then the rest of it drinking).
If you're playing a game with the same group of 20 or 30 people several hours a day several days a week you get to know them extremly well, even if you've never met them face to face.
Actually running a guild is a nightmare. Imagine trying to get 25 people with the right setup to be ready all at the same time, all having read up about the encounter, made sure they have got the right consumables (i.e. potions & scrolls to give you extra damage/health etc).
Then you have to consider that it's no good just taking the top 25 players in the guild, you also need to consider that you need to take some of the lesser geared players so they can get better gear so they can step in if other players aren't available. You can't just take 25 heavy hitters otherwise they all die because no ne can heal them, but on the flip side, take to many healers and then you don't output enough damage to kill the boss in time. So to have a sucsessful raiding guild that can field 25 people when needed means you need to keep 40 or 50 or even more people happy and willing to work together, when I was last playing the guild I was in had about 60 actual members, but most of these people had 3 or 4 actual characters.