The shallow conclusions in this thread is not even close to why. It’s actually because of this quote ^.
Thing is, social immersion is a thing as well. But because of the extreme anonymity, this is much less of a thing now than it was in Vanilla. Refail however is even worse in regards to this.
that thread goes a little more into why that is.
But simply put: anonymity online, i.e. no social repercussions for bad behavior and how you never really recognize enemies nor teammates, is why people’s minds naturally focus on more self-centric stuff.
We all know what anonymity online does to people. It’s even documented in studies. Well, the same thing goes for games, and that’s why vanilla had better realm communities.
People haven’t magically changed into different species since then. It’s what they’re exposed to that has changed, thus it elicits different reactions and behaviors.
This falls under the umbrella term called Social Design in game design.