Honestly, this isn't a new thing. I remember last year when the older players were saying the same things: "The community is terrible now! It was so much better in the summer of 2012!"
The community grows, goes through cycles, stages. Honestly, the fact that the community feels different might be a healthy sign that MCSG is still growing strong: It's not the same active players that were around before, or people have changed and adapted, clearly somewhere along the way, something happened, which means MCSG likely isn't struggling with growing a new playerbase all the time.
Does this mean the competitiveness to win causing toxic behavior isn't a bad thing? Heck no, that could stand to be addressed. And while maybe a rule or two could be added here and there, it's up to the community to solve that problem for a big part of it. There is a reason many games have had developers give up on trying to stop it beyond basic filters and a moderation team for forums: It's almost impossible. I wish you good luck in your endeavors to get the community to fix it.
In general, I've noticed that a game community feeling worse, or the game itself feeling more competitive, is natural for some people over time when playing a game. I came here to play for fun and that's what I assumed most of the community was doing when I played, but after I became active and played for a while, I heard stories from many parties of old, before they disappeared. Things in the earliest days of MCSG is always made out to be so great by the people who talked to me about it...but honestly? All I heard was that there were arguments between clans, issues within the staff, and general drama, just like there always has been and always will be...but in fact, it was worse then, while the server was developing and these events had significant impact on the growth of the server. Nowadays, arguments between clans are a lot less of significant events to everyone else, and staff issues are dealt with without the whole community knowing details they shouldn't. (And for good reason, mind you.)
None of these old arguments were things I heard about then, when they were happening, though. They took place in private places, spread by word of mouth, made their way to small portions of the forums, where I had to know a few names and terms by heart to understand. It took some time in the community before I noticed how bad it really was. For a while after joining, I was under the impression that, aside from the obvious raging behind computer screens that would happen occasionally, people were mostly pretty friendly in places like the forums. This changed when I became really active.
In my case, part of the reason I play so little now is because I was around for so long that every little thing started getting to me. This is for a combination of reasons, but how much I noticed all this drama stuff added to the pile. I
tried to come back around the time the Blamph's attempted to restart, but that experience only farther proved to me that I couldn't ignore the problems. I stayed here for a long time, and was so active during the time, that how I personally felt about a whole bunch of little things builds up. When I lost a game, it seriously matter to me, for reasons sometimes not only involving the player or game itself.
Edit:
I wish more people like you would say their opinions on the subject. Few posts on the forums and no donor rank, but lots of experience. It's interesting to see how the "nobodies", for lack of a better word, get treated just because they aren't well know.
All I've seen is what I get to hear. I always get treated special in-game by even random newer players because of my rank, so I honestly don't know the experience for people like you.
Opinions from players like yourself are valuable: Don't be afraid of other players bringing you down. I may not personally agree with everything you said, but I can perfectly understand where you are coming from.
(Though you saying "famous" players being nice being due to getting up the social tree kind of hurt. D: I may not be famous, but my rank certainly makes lots of people think I am. Certainly, I am extra nice due to my rank, but that's because I'm obligated to, people look up to special rank colors, I
can't say the things I may sometimes want to say, or I'd risk loss of rank, punishment, and would be a horrible roll-model for other players. Is it wrong for me to make everything sound as polite as possible?)
What you need to do is just learn to accept the fact that people will be rude. Tell them off and report them if they get out of hand. I choose not to remember the bad times, but think of when I helped some noob get his first win, when I meet a nice person in chat, or when somebody decides to help me out. On the Internet, there will be bad apples everywhere, but we just need to look out for and have fun with the good people.
