I personally also disagree with the idea of turning off chat channels in the MMO gaming.

Disabling communication in a Multi-Player just completely defeats the purpose of the game. Many MMO's are setup so that later content requires group effort and coordinated team tactics. The whole purpose of an MMO is that it is "Massively Multiplayer" and dependent on your interaction with other players in the game.

If you don't want to play a game with other people, then don't. On a personal note if I see a player in a game who is doing something (this happens a lot in WoW) and for some reason does not respond to at least a "hello," I assume they are either a gold spammer who is mindlessly grinding, an automated bot or a self-centered jerk and treat them as such.