Adding to what OP and Rilifane (comment 35) already said:
In my case, it's not just me getting more and more cynical, but also me as a pseudo-senior in the game noticing how the behaviour of new players changed in the last 5 years.
When I was new, there seemed to be nobody in our merry "we are green behind the ears"-boat who would get upset when veterans gave an advice on mechanics, how to use some skills or explaining general stuff about instances. To be blunt, all we amateurs on big-old Chaos were happy when people took the time to teach us something.
Now, it's 50/50 whether a new player will be glad or angry. You can be as polite as you want to, there's still the chance someone will behead you for giving an advice. The word "Elitist" flies so careless out of the window that it's baffling.
The greatest annoyance considering mentioned oddity, from my experience, are the LV50 24-people-raids.
->I have seen everything from the classical "Shut up" to very impolite phrases I will better not quote here. Worst is, that even players react that way who have maybe cleared these raids once or twice yet definitely haven't understood what to do when.
And the stuff many players will excuse on the contrary makes everything just weirder and weirder.
->Like a tank yesterday, who kept in World of Darkness the dragon close to the entry and didn't even go North after his healer tried to Rescue-pull him there.
You think people told him he was doing something wrong?
...
Nope.
...
But the vocal ones attacked ME when I informed the tank about his mistake. Half my group had to die thanks to AOEs everywhere until the tank finally brought the dragon at least to the middle of the field.
I can't talk about the US-/JPN-datacenters, but the servers here are sometimes filled with new people who just want to rush stuff and don't understand they have to learn mechanics on the way in order to have already mastered them in endgame-area.
->From my point of view, gaining massive EXP for a character can't replace the experience a player must gather themselves to understand stuff just by looking at it. But obviously it's more important to reach LV80 as fast as possible without getting used to standard-mechanics.