..... And on the forums! Remember the PvP forum on the boards? A more wretched hive of scum and villainy would be hard to find, and I played a lot of villains.
There were a few funny people in there, Xury was very funny and Reiraku was funny too; there were a few more people I liked. But in the main: stupidity and smack-talking, just like in the zones.
So, funny story.
Way back, long before CoH, I played EQ. Having no idea of how MMO's worked or how to play them, I quickly found out that you do not fall for the "free arrows in the arena" ploy. It took a LOT of deaths just to recover my corpse and get safe. That experience really soured me on PvP in MMO's.
So, fast forward to CoH. i4 is on the way and I'm actually looking forward to it. I really wanted to see how my heroes stacked up against others. It was hit or miss with me at first, but I didn't have anything that could really compete at a high level. By i6, I really got focused on playing and got into a villain group that had a number of regular PvP'ers. Siren's made it so much better.
I spent a lot of time PvP'ing since then. Zones, arena, kickball matches. I saw it all, and talked with everyone I could. And while there was trash talk, it wasn't from very many people. The main problem was the ones who did it were usually constant with it and REALLY bad at actual PvP. But the ones who were good, they were the nicest, most generous, and most helpful people in the game.
Most of them didn't bother with forums, or even have anything but team chat up half the time. You'd never see them in broadcast. If you sent them a tell though, they could spend hours giving advice on anything in the game (PvE or PvP) with a smile. And reading the forums, one could understand why they'd avoid it.
The forums at large hated PvP. One person would claim "bad attitudes and trash talk" then proceed to spend the next ten posts dodging the profanity filter just to trash talk PvP'ers. Another would unapologetically compare it to AIDS. One would call PvP'ers the worst kinds of people, then post about how the Germans were considered "heroes and liberators" in Poland in WW2. In the end, I saw more garbage thrown at PvP and PvP'ers from non-PvP'ers than I ever had in PvP. Not to mention all the blame PvP got for nerfs that even the devs specified on that not being the case, but people still claim because "they just KNOW".
What I said then is what I say now about it. There are jerks in PvE. There are jerks in PvP. Likewise, there are good people in both. The perception comes from how they affect you. If someone treats you like garbage in a PvP zone, it isn't because PvP'ers are jerks, but that guy is. If someone acts like a jackass on your TF, it isn't because PvE'ers are jerks. Just that guy. Just like how different sections of the forums had their "in-jokes", such as Virtue's Rookery, FG's Kitty Court. The PvP forums had theirs too, which often came across as malice to those who just passed by. Truth was, 99% of it was said and taken in good fun. When it came time for a match to start, it always began and ended the same way. "GL HF" and "GG".
TL;DR: PvP is good and has the best people. We also have huge PvPness.
