Playing Together: Leeching and Kill-Stealing In Any Other MMORPG

A major part of Disney's ToonTown online is built around the concept of "playing together", and "fairness", hence the lack of a trading/market system for the fear of "unfair" trades (which don't actually exist, considering nobody ever trade for anything they don't actually desire, even if they suffer buyer's regret afterwards), as well aspects of the game's combat system, which requires other players for healing and so forth.

However, this concept fails hard when it comes down to the party-based combat system. By not allowing players to form parties, along with having combat encounters occur in the in-game world and allowing any player to join in any battle that has less than four players active, Disney has built a system where players are encouraged to find and join battles were one or two other players have expended significant amounts of resources in wearing down the enemy to near their breaking point. Once such a player has joined the battle, they can then choose a low speed weapon, thus allowing the other players in the battle to expend resources in killing the opponent(s) present, at the same time progressing in quests (called ToonTasks) and what not without having to expend any resources.

Likewise, a player who joins an ongoing battle can choose a high speed weapon and make the kill, effectively robbing any player who has invested resources into the battle of the satisfaction of killing the enemy at hand.

In every other game, these activities would be called "leeching" and "kill-stealing", all of which are considered aspects of "griefing", that is, a negative style of play associated with players who wish to cause others grief. So, why is it that in Disney's ToonTown Online, players are encouraged to leech, kill-steal and grief in general? If this game is supposed to be fun for everyone, the gameplay design decisions certainly aren't designed for this.