Thought I'd chip in my own .02 here.
Part of what's going on, IMO, is that players of RPGs can be divided (inexactly) into two camps: the role-players and the stat-builders. If you're one of the people who finds role-playing more important, you balk at having your benevolent characters butcher the kindly NPCs, if you feel compelled to create the most powerful character(s) possible, you shrug and take the experience. It's really a question of priorities. Probably a question of temprament.
As far as the "reflecting how we really are, deep inside" part, we all (myself included) tend to make vast assumptions about what's going on when someone is playing a game, without really examining them. I, personally, have seen very little on why people enjoy the experience. My own guess is that, like most forms of "play," it's a kind of "practice" in the same way that cats practice hunting skills. I myself have been guilty of howling in savage glee as a difficult boss monster went down, for example. For the stat-builder, killing all the high-XP NPCs could just be an expression of the desire to create the perfect character, in much the same way you might want to create the perfect painting. For the role-players, it's the desire to act a certain way in unambiguious circumstances (for once.)
I myself have been known to play a game through more than once, the first time as a roleplaying experience, the second as a stat-builder (for some reason I sometimes feel a compulsion to "crush" the game.) And I never represented the different styles in these terms until now. And I've run on way to long already, this has become more like my 5.00 instead of my .02. Sorry
Feel free to disagree if you like. I'd be interested anyone else's take.
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