I can't believe I know this one.
Carebear was a term coined in Ultima Online by a player named Elawyn, on a forum, between two large groups of roleplayers on different servers (Chesapeake, Lake Superior).
The Chessy group was more into peaceful/non-violent centered RP, and the LS group was more into PVP. At some point the Chessy folks decided to pay the LS group a visit, and rolled characters named "carebear" related names and set upon the LS group with hugs and carebear stares.
The policy continued on Chessy, as this passive resistance and non-violent approach would often bug the wits out of people trying to get the better of them.
It's not because they didn't know how to PVP, or weren't any good at it, in fact some of them were
really very good. It was just the style of play they chose to take.
Amusingly enough, I am old school enough to remember when this went down.
