[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Didn't bother to read the articles, because of my disgustingly vast experience in regards to 'net relationships.

Long ago, before NWN, berfore WoW, and before the rest of that (even before Furcadia became popular!), there were IRC chatrooms. Now, these chatrooms were specifically tied to an RP forum, where lots of forum-style RP went on (write a bigass post about your character and his/her actions, let the other go, repeat), so these chatrooms became venues for RP themselves. Just as people have relationships, so too, did characters in these chatrooms have relationships; however, due to the more immersive nature of this style of RP (not Players and Player Characters, but just one person with a given screenname), the line between character and player became so blurred as to be nonexistent.

You can see where things go from there. People start calling each other, even taking trips to see one another, and all hell could and did break loose.

With Layonara, however...

There is a very clear distinction between player and character on Layo, a distinction made stronger by the multiple characters many players have. As such, there are quite a few in-game relationships in which the players actually aren't interested in each other any more than two novellists who write in the same genre are interested in each other. For example, myself and EvilPhd (Silool). Pyyran, my character, and Silool, EvilPhd's, are very much involved, yet EvilPhd and I see each other as fellow roleplayers, and little more (though EvilPhd is a decidedly niftycool person). Personally, it's more and more refreshing, the more I think back to the olden days when I have to wonder at how I wasn't losing my mind.

So... Funfun.