Once upon a time, I used to engage, for months or years at a time, in massive multiplayer online browser strategy games where alliances with strangers from all over the planet were common enough. If you were one who would go outside of some nationally based circle. If I were not able to show up in the game on time to share some mission with people whom I knew nothing about other than their ingame behavior and mIRC chats, I would feel bad about deserting them. It was kind of a high priority not to allow that to happen.