This morning for no obvious reason, I remembered the Fuel Rats.
Elite:Dangerous is an MMO space sim game, with a big galaxy in which you fly a spaceship doing stuff. Spaceships need fuel, which you buy at stations, or if you have a fuel scoop you can skim the surface of certain stars to get usable fuel.
Space is big though, and it's quite possible to run yourself low on fuel in a way that you can no longer warp to any inhabited system to refuel. At which point you're screwed.
Or at least you would be, in the game as designed. But one item spaceships can have is "fuel limpets", effectively small missiles that can transfer fuel to another ship.
So, shortly after the game launched, a group of players formed the Fuel Rats, an emergency refueling service.
Ran yourself out of gas? Don't panic, head to the Fuel Rats website and hit the distress button.
You get dropped into an honest to god IRC channel, with the current on-call dispatcher. They collect your location, make sure you have enough oxygen reserves and how to conserve resources.
Meanwhile, responders hanging out in the channel have been plotting a course to your location, and reporting ETA and jump counts back to the dispatcher. The distpatcher assigns (usually) a primary and backup responder, and they start heading your way.
Eventually one of them drops out of warp near you. Even in an MMO, it's a very odd feeling having another player ship drop out of cruise, and slowly pull up to your windshield.
They say hi, did I find the right place, you need fuel right? They transfer a bunch of fuel, give you pointers to the nearest systems with fuel services, and make sure you're in good shape to get yourself to safety.
The thing I find remarkable about this, is that the Fuel Rats aren't a game feature. There are no rewards for being a fuel rat (in fact, it's policy to refuse payment if the recuee offers), except the intrinsic reward of helping people have a nice time.
Despite this, the fuel rats were one of the first "guilds" formed, if you want to call them that, and have been going strong for years. According to their stats, they have rescued 157 thousand stranded players, with a 96% success rate.
I find it reassuring that in a game that is in some ways a libertarian power fantasy (you and your spaceship, go anywhere do whatever you want), and a PvP universe, one of the first things people did was create a volunteer ambulance service.
@danderson Maybe it's because anyone who isn't rased into an antisocial asshole generally doesn't mean harm to their fellow human beings, but instead has basic compassion.