How did the community become this toxic?

[LordNickage]

I would say any group of people is going to have bad apples. Sometimes you just have to look a bit harder to find the awesome people that make you remember why you play MMOs in the first place. I helped a couple randoms, along with a friend of mine who recently got the game, with the storyline Ifrit battle.
We all had a blast, and I made a couple friends. Yeah, there's a lot mediocre people you will encounter.. but I like to think those few great encounters justify the rest.

[Eisah]

I helped a couple randoms, along with a friend of mine who recently got the game, with the storyline Ifrit battle.

I usually stick with lower level stuff myself and don't have too much problem with the way people act. Sure, you find a stinker every now and then, and quiet groups sometimes, but I've also ended up in funny and friendly groups.
I'm one of the people who has a lot of trouble with the latency and lag, so I've spent a lot of time avoiding dungeons that I know will be a problem. I've found when I do the higher level stuff people seem to get way less friendly. (Honestly, a lot of the hire level stuff just isn't that appealing to me, anyway. "Farm this over and over to get this gear so you can farm that over and over to get that gear..." Isn't that bound to attract elitism?)

[Lord_Zlatan]

Isn't that bound to attract elitism?)

Maybe for some, but for me the more repetitive the content the more prone I am to just flub it sometimes and have fun. I could really care less how 'efficiently' i farm philo/myth. Over the holidays I was off work for 12 days and capped after just 2 days. I still ran AK/WP with people just because I wanted to help out on my server.

I had a newly 50'd WHM in a group that filled a spot for my FC doing CBM hard. I told him that he can just follow along or we can explain everything to him. He was almost afraid to ask, so I just took the liberty of explaining it anyway. We wiped a few times, had some laughs, and went on our separate ways.

I have spent the full 90 minutes teaching people how to speed run WP before, and when we didn't get the 30 myth at the end, no big deal.

IMO the repetitive content gets the elitist tag when you get fed up with it, and IMO that is a product of omgweneedtodoeveryruninfiveminutes. not every cares about that.