I had momments like that in ffxi. Like getting my mnk af quest with my... well recent ex b/f ( ; ; ) and I accidently aggro the whole top map of davoi. (before the fix) I had about 50-100 orcs on me and managed to zone it.

UI saw a death penalty as a reason for surviving. You learn to survive to avoid death. I also took pride in my jobs and tried playing them to the fullest. Saddly no one I knew or grouped with on ffxi saw this. They saw it as a waste of time and avoided it to the fullest instead of learning their class. The relied to heavily on getting PL. Something I didn't like. With PL parties went to fast for me to keep up with and my skills started becoming crappy. I got annoyed by this very quickly.