When I first started raiding back in the days of Kara, I was happy to be raiding at all. Our raid leader was a dictator. He screamed, yelled, and threw tantrums at people in vent and in chat. Loot mid-fight during trash pulls? Booted from the raid. He held people to one set of rules and lived by a completely different set himself. Most of us sucked it up, as we felt lucky to be raiding at all. There were more than a few who raid quit and /gquit on the spot. I wish I had done the same sooner than I did.

I have since moved on to much greener pastures. I found you can "have fun with your friends" and "legitimately try to kill bosses" at the same time. And it doesn't take a dictator to have both. I just requires the leader to earn your respect, both as a leader and as a person, and to give that respect in return. That way if he messes up, we can call him on it and not expect a diatribe about how it really wasn't his fault. If we mess up, he can call us out and we feel motivated to do better. In Wrath we were bleeding edge as basically a 10-man strict (one raider liked to do 25s on the side). In Cata, we've downed nearly all the current raid bosses. We have a hell of a lot of fun to boot.