Yep there were some pretty disgusting people on there. People who thought they were high and mighty and looked down on others. Ironically, these were supposed to be the "good" guys of Champion. Ask the friends of the person who ostracized from that group that he tried to make friends with in what I guess was his last place of refuge and ended up killing himself. What did those "good" guys do then? You guessed it. A lot of "good riddance" and plenty of jokes. Fakes and Phonies abound. Not saying this about the majority who played on there mind you but the so-called representatives of Champion were made of of truly wretched and miserable people as well as the mentally ill. Really a sad sad state of affairs and something that I am sure will get glossed over as people start using selective memory to only think about the good times.
I should preface my comment with this small caveat. I probably fit this stereotype of "disgusting" people. Liberty was my home server, but during the last year, when iTrials came out, I started playing a bit on Champion, mostly on weekends, because I thought I could use a break from leading iTrials, and @amygdala seemed to have very little trouble recruiting very seasoned players, which provided a stronger probable chance of success on a PUG.
Because I wasn't playing on Champion enough to be known as one of "them", I read ( via tells) a few comments from players about other players - snobbery, mean spiritedness, all manner of derogatory terms in reference to specific people that I had no problem with. In fact, I was glad to read them, because it helped remind me of the reality of perception, particularly when not everyone is on Skype or Ventrillo. A lot can get lost in text without the verbal intonation and pitch. So, on my server, when I would lead, I tried very hard to tone down my judgemental attitude towards players who may not have had the free time I had to learn how to better play their toon via marketing, or just reading various builds on the forums or spending hours with Mids'. It didn't come easy, I assure you. I'm fairly certain that I had a fair amount of people on Liberty viciously attacking my lack of maturity - which was probably a very fair conclusion based on the evidence that I gave them. However, I also had a good deal of respect from people I felt privileged to get it from.
And, as much as I thought I knew, though it was a bitter pill to swallow, On Champion, I learned at least one lesson about my ice/emp controller that I thought I had already learned about Absorb Pain. (let's not get sidetracked - some prefer it, some don't, some insist on it, some don't - each of us had our reasons for our opinions) In my case, I got irked a bit by what I took as a snide comment because I didn't have it. Years ago, AP was a little more harsh for the good heal it gave. Because respecs were plentiful, I could take a peek at it and changed my mind. (but, at the time, I wasn't really pleased to get the free advice.)
That one instance though - it did shed some light on how some folks might take the comment to be helpful, and some to be hurtful. In retrospect, I look at it like it was a traffic jam. Some folks are thrilled to have bumper to bumper traffic - it gives them time to text or put make up on or scarf down lunch. Whether you got angry or not about your circumstance depends on what's inside each of us, and what's going on with us as individuals.
It's trite but true - beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If you see wretched, evil people, that's probably because of where you are in your life. Your individual filter. We're all different, with varying degrees of moral behavior. We don't all live by the same set of rules. I would venture that there were mean-spirited people on every server, just as there were marvelously helpful, nonjudgemental people on every server.