Read a lot of posts. Wondered why MUDs didnt have these probs 20 years ago. Remembered. So on September 15th the tower just explodes. Guardians and NPCs are laying everywhere, ghosts floating above them. People who join late arrive to see lvl ??? knights denying rezzes next to their clanmate or friend who must be revived to respawn. People are screaming over headsets. " WHY does it say 'disconnecting before being revived and escaping the tower will lose all progress and equipment on my current character'?!?! Is this a troll bungie? Is this a JOKE?" On most early MUDS, it was not a joke. Going too far out in the wilds, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time could kill your character, and often you HAD to be rescued and revived or you would lose the character's equipment, possibly the character itself. So, you know, we were VERY -blam!-ing nice to each other. And that's why we didn't spend all day on the forum treating each other like garbage. We could not AFFORD to offend someone who might end up being the last living soul huddled and terrified by our side during a surprise event that carried with it real risk to our progress. If anything even REMOTELY similar to this happened on september 15th, every single last one of you who has ever disagreed with someone on this forum to the point of anger or disrespect would INSTANTLY abandon all your principles at the moment that even ONE of your rarer drops was on the line. You would clutch gratefully at ANY hand that descended to the rubble in which your guardian lay, whether that hand belonged to a dame, to wishyouluck, to deej, to anyone... To Kirmit the mother-blam!-ing frog. After the battle, people might go back to playing with only those they agreed with and occasionally getting angry at other players on a public forum. But not very loud, and not for very long. Players in most modern games never need each other to save their very character from erasure. So, predictably, they treat each other like shit. I felt a little better about all the bullshit flying around here lately after I remembered how things used to be. We are very safe these days, and tend towards discrimination. It's too bad but at least I can quit wondering why online gamers seemed so much cooler to each other back in the day...