One thing people forget is how much slower you played. You didn't risk things.You didn't "try" things to see if it would work and you got very, very upset if something went pear shaped or you got dc'd at a bad time rofl. Also people tended to gang up and it turned into a bit of a western, where a posse goes out to hunt someone.
Yes it had advantages as well, but generally it was a slower, more careful and methodical game play style. The newer style is much more free and you tend to attack even if you feel you might lose, because what the hell.
How about this? just delete your char everytime you get killed so tera would feel more like a real pvp game for you?
The people comparing games to real life know nothing about either and need to quit posting.
The generation hasn't only changed in the direction of "carebears"
The number of greifers/[filtered]s has increased as well.
10+ years ago I played an mmo based on the player world system which is barely an upgrade from muds.
When you died you dropped all your equipment you were wearing and anyone could pick it up, there was world pvp and people could be killed anywhere except some major towns (some towns had pvp enabled) on this server there were on average 300-500 people online.
Of those 300-500, 2 players were known for deliberately going out of their way to kill players, they would hunt lowbies ect.
Today if you took a player base of 300 and looked at how many would go hunting low level players for loot I would estimate around 50 of them would go ganking.
The attitude has completely changed over the years griefing is more prominent.
As for those who talk about server community etc, community itself used to be important these days server "communities" are just simply a giant circle jerk where you screw up once your out (god forbid you screw up by not knowing how a skill works within your first week of playing).
Look at any mmo community of today and its unforgiving of any form of failure/weakness.
DDO is a brilliant example of what happens with "communities" these days, I played it around release time, became acknowledged as amongst the top 5-10 clerics on Thelanis server, people knew if you did a run with me you were almost guaranteed to succeed.
Community was great people chatted, helped each other, gave build advice ect, If a newbie joined the server their name was shared around and people went out of their way to help them.
Then the server merge happened and an "elite" guild joined the server, Legion they were called, they were determined to compete for world firsts etc, Their hardcore guild focused on optimization running dungeons as fast as possible (literally running they wouldn't fight anything just sprint to the end opening doors along the way) All of their players had to optimize their builds their way (my build optimization wise was horribly, utility was its strength).
I watched as time and time again people would attempt to speak up against them and their methods, but hey Legion were successful those who spoke up soon found themselves on a blackban and could rarely find groups.
New players who joined either had to learn Legions methods or find themselves without groups.
I was one of the few players who could speak against them on the forums/in game without fear as I had built enough of a name for myself but even they tried to banlist me for it.
The simple fact was their methodologies encouraged lack of skill, things were brute forced or had an over reliance on using consumables. there were no tactics or strategy or calculations.
But these are the "communities" of today essentially you follow the crowd or don't get to play.
(fyi I had everything but 1 quest on Elite difficulty in that game and that 1 was a low lvl quest I could never be bothered to do)