Late night rambling

So the second post is here and it's somewhat serious but based in gaming.

It's community that makes an online game rewarding to play. PSO had this in abundance, regardless of what server you were on, which nationality the players were, it always felt like a tight place.

Talking to a friend (Vik, the filthy minded one) earlier about SWG and she stated about the community on there. So much so that with the combat upgrade nonsense that has happened she's gone and created a forum especially for the server to keep in contact now they've moved away from the game for the time being (maybe long term/forever).

This led to talk about EQ2, WoW and then onto FFXI. She commented on all not having this aspect. I cannot vouch for EQ2 or WoW but heck she was totally right about FFXI. You meet some great people on FFXI, I know many whom I shall remain in contact outside of the game but there is definitely no sense of community.

Is this maybe due to the way it seems to be set-up? You play the game and make friends and join a linkshell. You hit level 60 or so and then look for pastures new with a HNMLS forsaking your old linkshell in most cases. It's then a case of kissing enough arse to get what you can before backstabbing someone (maybe not the backstabbing part but it seems to be becoming more of a common thing).

On top of this, every single HNMLS seems to be in competition with everyone else. One monster pop in every 24 hour span whilst it sounds like an event it ends up with people camping, spam botting and worse going for MPKs. It's at the point when no-one cares about anything or anyone else and are levelling BST so they can all MPK each other. Where the feck has common sense gone?

Am I living in a closed world or is this what it is like on every other game? A constant chase for rare items and money forsaking everything else? I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make here or what issues I'm trying to raise, it's far too late/early but what I do know for sure is this:

We are playing a game, games are supposed to be fun. Leave the backstabbing anti-social shit at the door and just get along for the good of all.