It's the human nature, we're actually more Darwinian than we think. We think it's OK to step on other people's heads, to use other people as stepping stones for our own needs. *As long as they are not our friends.*

I believe a lot of gamers were raised in the "survival of the fittest", "you can't help others if you can't even help yourself" mentality. Older MMO's which were more grind-like, and had a lot of player-controlled content (such as pvp, guild/nation wars, territorial control, etc.) tend to give birth to such players. When you are the top player in your class in your server, it gave you and your guild/group of friends lots of bragging rights. MMO's tend to be something of a never-ending game either - you are always constantly in a race to improve yourself. There is never someone who has "reached the pinnacle of his/her might" in an online game - there are only people who are bored with the current content to do any more. It's a race to the top with no ending tape in sight. Everybody wants to get to the top. Therefore they justify this sort of behaviour. They don't have the time to wait for other players, their time spent on helping other people move up, is time wasted that they could have spent on moving themselves up instead.

I like the design of this game. I agree lockouts and artificial caps can make content seem slow, but it's a necessary evil so that the gap between players in terms of character progression isn't blown so far wide apart that people don't get to feel like they're getting somewhere.

Ultimately, you need to look for meaningful connections in game. The people that are willing to help you out, the people with whom you can enjoy the game with and have fun. Not everyone is a jerk, and there are definitely some good apples among the bad ones. Seek them out, befriend them, and hopefully your experience will improve.

You can also consider a server transfer. I can't speak for other servers at the moment but Tonberry, as that's where I'm primarily based in. I run a nice Linkshell, filled with nice and helpful members. We just play around, muck around, have fun, etc. Tonberry is a Japanese server, with a huge English speaking community, based in South-East Asia, and Australia/New Zealand, so there's no problems with finding English players.

One more thing I cannot really speak up much for is the toxicity of players in Tonberry. I tend to hear about horror stories about unfriendly players, who spew vitriolic comments, and are generally unforgiving. I don't see the same problem in Tonberry however, since whenever I use the Duty Finder, I usually queue for Japanese parties. They are much more patient, they generally encourage each other when things are going bad, and they don't give up easily. I was doing Pharos Sirius once in a Japanese pug group, and although we wiped at Siren for 70 minutes (eventually we did not clear the dungeon), but I was really not compelled to leave them because I could see they were trying hard. It was the healer's second time in Pharos, and I tried to guide them with a combination of my limited Japanese knowledge, and Google Translate. While we didn't clear it, but I felt much more satisfaction helping them improve and gain more exposure for the dungeon/fight, than if I were to leave them and said to myself that they were a waste of my time.