As a couple of people have already pointed out, the power-levelers have been with us from the beginning. But I can answer one of your questions, I think, the one about why don't people slow down and get to know some people. One trend I noticed a couple of years ago that's only gotten more pronounced is the rise of the permanent migratory mega-guilds. When you and 100 or 200 of your friends migrate from one MMO to another, it certainly does help the power-leveling, and the race to the end-game content is certainly made faster by the fact that all you have to do to schedule a 96-man raid is put it on the calendar in the week's usual "raid in whatever MMO we're playing this month" time slot.