Thank you!
Back when I firsted joined PotCO, people were
ALOT nicer to random folks on the street than now. If you ask for help, or if they simply saw you needed help, they would be glad to take time out of their playing-time to help you, no matter what level they were. Now? Your lucky if you can get people to leave their little cliques and just say "Hi."
I'm not sure anybody can make judgement on why this is happening, because in every case, it must be different. But there are a lot of broad possibilities. To name just a few:
- "Pirate Nativism" - Some pirates that may be in the higher levels, or have been with the game longer, like to look down on newer pirates. This is DEFINATELY not the case with the majority of older players, but it is out there.
- Unawareness - Remember when you were back in Elementary School? Where the kids would say things that could hurt somebodies feelings flat out, like "Your ugly" or "You smell"? Well, some of those kids, believe it or not, may be playing PotCO (because lets face it, you know that parents will let their kids play games that aren't appropiate to their age according to the rating.) And of course, these kids are impressional. They see words used like "Noob" and "Stupid," they pick up on them, and then they volley them back to others.
- It's the Internet - A lot of people think that they are invincible when they're hidden behind a computer-generated avatar. They can say what they want, do what they want, and it won't affect them. "If I can do it, then I'll do it." Thats just some peoples mentallity.
Just a few of the scenarios.
And why is it growing? Also, unable to fully define. But it may either because its spreading to other players - or that the game is spreading to people.
Back when I joined, the game was a lot less populated than it is today. And the majority of those players were nice. Of course, there were "bad seeds." Now, lets look at it as a fraction. Say the ratio of good-to-bad with the old population was 3:1. Now, the game has multipled sufficently. So, lets multiply that fraction by 4, just as an example. That makes it 12:4. So both of them went up, but there are more "bad seeds" out there in that wide spectrum. So as the game grows, they might be growing as well.
Just possibilities. But either way, it's a problem.