it hasent hurt me, it helped me quickly get to my friends level (he got me to 15 in a hour or 2) so i could catch up quick so we could level (he was 24). Of course i was swapping servers so i already had been playing my class for a while, so my story is slightly different.

It was nice to quickly get me close to his level, so i found it to be nothing but helpful. I also found out that with a decent group of 8 you can level pretty damn fast too. If their was a good search system that people actually use, they will party much more, not all of them of course, but it will get a good chunk of people to realize how quick group leveling is and how much more fun it is, so they will rarely bother to get PL'd (unless its to quickly get a skill from another class, though jobs will effect even that)

And after so long you cant really be PL'd, so reguardless you have a good chunk of levels you will pretty much have to party...and if you suck because all you did was get PL'd, dont expect for PTs to keep you around.

In the end its all about choice. you can choose to get PLd, the PLer has to choose to spend their time doing it, you can choose to ignore bad players who only want to be PLed and end up sucking because of it (hell we barely interact outside of shells as it is). So IMO its not really effecting somone who CHOOSES to play "properly".