This is a common and popular view, but does not make it true.
You take something that matters in terms of survival and generalize, but this does not make it true in general.
It lies in the nature of sports and games, that people are NOT using every advantage and they "play" around. Sure the boxer does not punch "slower", but there are rules governing the fight. And as i see it, Barbaric mistook the other player for a decent person he could ask to try something out. In boxing analogy a sparring partner...seems he was wrong
Maybe these people have gone now, but i DO remember that in 2009/2010 there were different minded pvpers around (or maybe i get the impression, because there were simply MORE pvpers around and it was easier to ignore the id****). They geared down, did not use comboskipping every time, and did not qq when they got killed...and what might be more important, they were able to TALK
This resulted in player made sandboxes, brutal fights which resulted not in a permanent grudge and more fun overall.