First, some background. I have been playing GW extensively since the initial release of GW1, and served as the leader of a decent size GW1 alliance. In GW2, I serve as the leader of a medium size guild composed of core players who transitioned from GW1 since day one of the release of GW2. As someone who has been focused on GW for approximately 10 years now, I had thought that I would be one of Anet’s target audiences - but I am begging to think that is no longer the case.
My guild is on SoR, and for the most part, the vast majority of random folks we have run with have been friendly, mature and cooperative. I used to often join up with others, made a few friends, and sometimes would join them for other in-game activities. However, since the Megaserver, our ability to even venture in the same general area as others has been negatively impacted by the excess number of complete @$$$#0|* players who seem utterly compelled to demonstrate their lack of maturity and intelligence. This has not only prompted the vast majority of those in my guild to turn off Map chat, but most of the time Say chat as well. It was always my belief that the different servers had very different personalities, and I have experienced some of that in LFG dungeon and fractal runs with persons from other servers. But in the open world since Megaserver, it seems to be much MUCH worse.
By way of example, earlier today I ran around doing misc quests solo, and ran into a person who went on a cursing tirade for my having the gall to do the same quest as them - even though (a) it was a super easy and fast quest, (b) my completing the quest had virtually no impact on their ability to complete the quest, and of course (c) no one person has a monopoly on an activity when they are present in the open PvE world (I’ve never seen anyone stand in line to do hearts before, nor do I have any understanding why someone would have the belief that this was standard protocol). Ultimately I had to block the person to prevent them from continuing to hurl expletives in my direction, even though their ire was entirely self inflicted.
After chalking up the prior experience as merely an unlikely run in with the lowest 1% GW2 has to offer, I swapped zones and began completing a completely different map. Along my path was a skritt burglar running around, with a couple folks appearing to try to grab him. I crippled the burglar to make him easier for these others to catch, and landed a few hits on him for some personal loot but intentionally didn’t spike him down, as I knew that others would want to get some hits in on him. Once the skritt burglar was down, I picked up my drops and headed off. But, before I did, one of the others who had participated in this activity began verbally attacking me, for my horrible sin of hitting the same enemy that they did (even though my actions actually aided them in catching up to him, so they could get more loot). This prompted me to have to, once again (less than 30 mins after the first incident) block an idiot who was bombarding me with insults for no good reason.
I am not someone with a thin skin, but I do find the seeming change in tone since Megaserver to be quite annoying. While I can understand and admire the desire to give folks more persons to play with, Megaserver’s impact has actually been perceived by myself, and many others in my guild, as a very imperfect solution to something which really wasn’t that much of a problem to start with. In my view, Anet seems to be getting better and better at giving us things we don’t ask for, and then expecting us to be grateful that they did (to paraphrase another popular thread, giving us yams, thinking it is somehow better than the potato we were expecting and wanted, and never taking into account that many people might hate yams).
Of course, this doesn’t even touch on the other Megaserver issues we’ve encountered repeatedly (guild members and even party members often getting sent to different instances, and sometimes being completely unable to join together in a single instance). Really seems that the pros and cons of this system should have been explored a bit more thoroughly before it was put in place.