FFXI is my first FF and my first MMORPG. I have done online chat (IRC and such) for years and am fairly good with normal RPGs, so I know the basics about etiquette, lingo, etc.
I got the game at the October release and (basically) just levelled to 30 by early December. Since then, I've been working a little on my ADV job and mostly on quests, crafting skills, and getting the other ADV jobs, so I haven't partied a whole lot in actual combat areas.
Recently, tho, I was working on helping people get keys or subjob quest items (I'm a THF/RNG, so I can help fairly well with this). This means combat (albeit "easy prey" or less for me, most of the time) with a party, the whole puller/healer/tank deal.
A 35 or so BLM and I were helping a bunch of 25s or so. It became apparently, relatively quickly, that the 25s never really paid attention to what the other people in the group were doing; they just did what they thought was the next "logical" move, without asking whether everyone else agreed or not. This is very much a "solo" mentality and not a party mentality.
For example, I was down to less than half my HP, the BLM was down in HP and almost out of MP, and one of them runs off and grabs a cursemaker, in the process aggroing two fighters he didn't see. Now, we'd said to wait; we'd said we needed to heal; and I'd even pointed out that, as a RNG, if I stood somewhere and pulled to me, there was probably a legitimate reason, such as not wanting to aggro other mobs. If I told them to wait in a spot so I could pull, they'd chase after me.
When people with this mindset party together, no one notices that anything is wrong; they all do the same thing. When they party with people who don't have this mindset, friction arises and, usually, someone gets frustrated/dead/disbanded - if not worse. A difference in assumptions and expectations will cause more grief or frustration than anything else.
With a large influx of people who really don't understand "our" party dynamics and with whose dynamics we don't agree, communication and explicit planning become very important. When you get into a party, ASK how they pull, who is tank, who is main healer, what the renkei are, etc. If people don't know what you're talking about, or don't seem to care, tell them there is probably a more efficient way to party than they are doing. If they don't want to hear it and it's really important to you, leave and wait for another party. It may seem rude, but you can simply say, "Sorry, I don't agree with your party methods, so we're both better off if I don't join you."
Too bad there isn't some kind of shorthand we can use to designate JP/Halloween style parties and the less-organized version. Like, when looking for parties, "/shout THF30/RNG13 puller lfg P/N/T/H" to specify a puller/nuker/tank/healer group. This can let people know that 1) you know what those roles are and 2) if they don't, you may not want to join them. If someone doesn't know the roles, you know that, if they join your party, they should probably not be in a major positions and would probably do better as back-up healer or melee. P/N/T/H may not be the right terminology, but I can't think of a more generic but still unbiased way of requesting it.
It isn't so much that we know more than they do, or an "us" vs "them". It's just a difference in styles. It is, however, enough of a difference to cause the kinds of rants that started this and countless other threads.
Oh well. We got the 25s their keys, and I hope some of them learned from the experience, but I'll just have to wait and see.