Someone like Xavori on Lake Superior was a good counterexample. He was a well role-played villain. Meanwhile there were hordes of troglodytes with borderline (or sometimes not at all borderline) offensive names going around and straight up griefing people. And that latter crowd ruined it for everyone.

A big delimiter I use when talking to people about those days was to what extent they view the largest issue being there not being enough unwilling participants in their PvP/griefing. A lot of people liked Siege Perilous, which was awesome. But a lot of the problem players didn't - because what they really enjoyed was griefing other players.