Posts: 3,135
Threads: 99
Joined: May 2012
Staff roles: Balance Dev
For more elaborate roleplay, the forums are far more convenient, simply because you are less time-constrained and can add a great deal more detail. For example, small things like the tone in which a character speaks are hard to add in-game (imagine having to type *In a serious tone* / *In a mocking tone* or whatever for almost every line) but trivial to add on the forums.
Additionally, images can make a story more appealing to read (or look at, I suppose) for both the players involved and other readers.
To some extent, it's more "realistic" as well. A thousand years into the future, it seems incredibly old-fashioned to physically meet people on the other side of Sirius when you can send them a transmission over the Comm Channel instead.
OMG I was whining about this in a chat yesterday. I wanted them to hurry up with the forum PvP and unleash us for all out ingame PvP. I have a love for forum PvP and it was my main role when leading a faction but I also knew the importance of having it set ASAP for my crew to be ingame performing what I'm writing about. The sooner they are clocking hours the better.
As for the OP - yes I recognize myself as one of those who do 2/3 forums and 1/3 actual playing. I like it that way. No one is being forced to follow that example though. You can play this game without the forums.
Not gonna lie, I'm pretty guilty of hardcore forumlancing over getting ingame. Mostly because my computer is so bad it has trouble running games even like Freelancer.
However, it's not really anything to be concerned with. Just give all the forumlurkers a good enough reason to get ingame and they will. Simple as that.