Sure I'll just drop what I'm doing....

Why? Why are you so petty? Just say no and go on about your business.

Fully with ya - no problem at all if someone does that...but who the hell asks some random stranger that? Like at 54 you really want to spend you last few moments helping him power level?! Had he asked in General chat, no problem...but to personally ask YOU? Odd...

The number you have dialed for Ikinai is no longer in service, if you believe you have dialed this number in error please hang up and try again. Thank you for using the Imperial Phone Service.

I did that to someone once, they kept pestering me, after the third time of getting that response they gave up.

Lol so using this next time I'm annoyed by someone.

Why, why do you even care? Especially enough to call me petty. Its not like you were uncontrollably compelled to read this thread, or any part of it. You could just go about your business instead of that. I'd call insulting me because of the thread "petty" myself.

Its not petty nor even selfish to be irked by the situation in the OP. You can disagree with it if you like, but no one is forcing you to take part in it.

Hahaha...I might have to use that response next time!

People asking for carries in general I just ignore, as in no replies / don't pay it any attention.

People asking for specific help in general like 'I'm having trouble beating X, any tips', I might respond in general, or if I'm not occupied, even whisper them with advice (though I NEVER join their group to go fight a boss for a random player).

People who whisper me unsolicited asking for hand-outs (credits, carries) just get added to my ignore list.

People who send group invites without asking I just decline. People who spam invites get added to my ignore list.

Yes, I'm jaded. But when I was new, I asked for help of the 'how do I learn' type, not the 'carry my lazy bum' type.

So people who can't be bothered to use Google, the forums, and / or ask for actual help and not hand-outs or expect higher level players to carry them through content annoy me to no end, and I have zero patience or respect for any of them.

At the same time, I do anything and everything I can to help my friends.

Someone keeps inviting me to group and then asks if I want to hang out. Both sides.

I've adopted a general policy of not helping people powerlevel or run quests more than 2 levels above their current level. And it's not because I don't like helping people. I really enjoy helping people. I've spent a lot of time and credits helping random strangers, but I've come to the conclusion that powerleveling and helping painfully underleveled characters just doesn't help them or the faction as a whole.

This weekend I played a round of Czerka Core Meltdown with a group that wiped eight times on the desert chamber alone. The reason for the wipes? Powerleveling. I was just running FPs for comms. I'm in all Basic gear, but most of my companions aren't. The Operative in our group was Level 55, but was still using a Level 35 earpiece and a Level 44 barrel in his rifle. Our Assassin "tank" was 55, but didn't have any gear over Level 45, and a lot of it was green. Both had been powerleveled by other groups and "helpful" people. The result was far from helpful. The tank didn't even know how to use his tanking abilities. And that was a good thing, because his armor didn't have much mitigation at all, and was instead a random collection of Power, Absorption, and Critical. The Operative was a bit better geared, but lacked both damage and armor. Because they had powerleveled, they had crap gear, very little experience using their abilities, and not much cash to buy gear or pay the costs to keep repairing it.

Underleveled characters are less annoying to the server community, but to my mind, a worse problem for the game. I made the mistake once of helping a Sentinel finish their class quest on Coruscant at level 13. They had rushed through the planet, ignoring the other quests because they heard they'd get a ship when they finished. Of course, at 13, both the Justicar and Works sectors get pretty dangerous, and he made it through to the temple by surfing behind other characters. I reluctantly agreed to help, if only to give me some time to explain the game more and craft him some better armor.

It was a mistake. We finished the quest, I gave him some free armor, and instructions to go back to the start and run through the other quests. It was wasted electricity. The moment he heard he had a ship, he jumped in and headed off to the next place the council told him to go. The next day I was on Taris with another character and recognized his name, begging for help trying to do a class quest halfway through the planet. He was only level 14 and was still wearing the free armor I gave him the day before. Other people kept helping him for a quest or two, and now he couldn't even walk around, because everything was too high level for him to even hit.

Someone needed to simply tell him to stop and not let him claw his way forward. Each time someone helped him, it just opened the door to another area where he couldn't enjoy the game. Since then, I simply refuse to help people on class quests if they're under the quest level. The class quests should be gates that allow you to prove that you can handle the next area. If you can't handle them alone, then you aren't ready yet.

At least he was properly thankful to the people who "helped" him. I was yelled at, insulted, and finally ignored by someone on Dromund Kaas when I said that Level 12 was too low to be in the Dark Temple and that he should level up. He flipped out at everyone who told him to go back and do other quests, insisting that Level 12 was as high as an F2P player could get on DK and that all the subs were jerks because they refused to help him like the quest was obviously designed for.

Now, are these examples accurate across all of the powerleveling/speedrun players? No, of course not. I don't have any problems with powerlevelers who are doing it to get another character option or just to quicken up the leveling period. I also don't care if people want to challenge themselves by trying to go through the game as quicly as possible or at as low a level as possible. Sounds like an entertaining challenge. Of course, those aren't the people who are begging for help, are they?

While I generally try to help people when able, as others have stated, its more in terms of advice.

They tend to get mad when you try to explain that If you just zerg through the bare minimum of content as you can to try to get elsewhere you will usually fail, spectacularly so. As well as fail to learn anything pertinant and useful about your class, abilities, and general gameplay itself

I hear a lot complain they just want to get to endgame and get the good gear. But if your a 55 in 40-50 greens (we won't even go into the STR users using Cunning/Aim/et cetera instead of STR) You can't really complain when no one wants to group with you to do said endgame content because you will just be a detriment.

Bottom line seems to be most are just lazy and expect/demand others to do the work for them, if they aren't hand held/given what they want rather then actually earning it, they complain we are ruining their "fun".

It sadly happens with those it shouldn't as well, had one "friend" who had the bad habit of rolling a toon, getting it to 20 then deleting it to make a new one, and coplaining when I didnt want to help them zerg alt #47 through korriban . (I said no because I knew the toon would just be deleted within 2 days anyhow)

Long story short, people will help if you are courteous about it, don't expect or demand and we will get along just fine. Sadly most are too impaired by the gimme gimme gimme I'm real the rest of you are just here to fascillitate my wants/needs mentality to do this.

*Addendum : My personal favorite is when you are on a planet and you get a tell that just says "Help". Er excuse me? Help what? (Extra points when they are on a completely -different- planet then you are)