Quote Originally Posted by Eorzean_username View Post
That's an interesting point. ... was just fear of the PvP community.

Which is weird in retrospect, because once I resigned myself to the need to farm Wolf Marks and started asking questions and joining matches, I was mostly met with patience, encouragement, support, helpful answers, etc — and I've had a lot of genuine fun. ...
For me personally, the PvP community's reputation was a lot worse than its reality. But that reputation definitely did discourage me from trying out PvP until forced to.

A factor that might contribute to this is that FFXIV doesn't offer any consequence-free PvP where you can casually try out PvP without the pressure of messing up someone's match. That's intimidating and discouraging, and it also impedes the ability of veteran PvPers to mentor and train curious new players.
The west are definitely a lot more sensitive these days, especially the XIV Western players. Lots of anxiety etc.