[Shaddox]

Of course, this is just an anecdotal observation, but I think what changed weren't the games, but the players.

I was playing Dark Age of Camelot back in the day and we'd spend hours just waiting around, chatting, meeting new people, trying to group up and try to clear a dungeon. Of course, our compositions were less than ideal but we'd try to make it work. Hey we have no one durable but if we take little Timmy's mercenary here and put some high armor gear on him and dual wield shields maybe it would work. Of course someone would go to bed or to dinner and then off to find a new player we go. Trying to make it work was the name of the game. With time, you'd amass a big friend list of reliable people you know you could call on a moment's need if they were online and most of the time they would be happy to help.

Modern players are borderline obsessed with time. No one wants to waste time experimenting with content so they look for guides to clear as fast as possible. Getting wiped immediately results in remarks of "you're wasting my time". The human aspect of the MMO has been stripped away by bots, fast travel, people generally being rude and the mumble/teamspeak server or discord group chat. Somehow, it feels like the MMO is a reflection of our current society.