When I play a live service like WoW I have a vested interest in the servers staying up, so recommending (regardless of that I am doing it due to enjoyment and opinion) that I am a shill.

I think the comparison to WoW is actually a rather instructive example, and in fact my own knowledge of how MMO communities normally behave comes from my years wasted on the game. What first struck me as so odd about the SC community was precisely how "invested" it seemed to be in CIG's financial success compared to how we WoW players treated Blizzard's relentless monetization efforts (very poorly).

The complete and utter lack of upvoted complaints on the subreddit was an immediate red-flag to me, and the critical mass of highly upvoted and unadulterated praise immediently off-putting. It felt so utterly and completely alien to how my understanding of a "normal" gaming community interacted with the corporate producer of the product they consumed.