People aren't wrong about the perfect villain disguisey stuff, though. All that serves to present to the community is "neener neener, I'm smarter than all of you."
Secret villains should never be talked about in public, otherwise you're begging for trouble. I mean, it really comes down to a few things: You either get people who figure it out sooner than you expect, or you get people who just metagame in figuring it out, or you get into arguments OOC about how people couldn't have known yet, which is also difficult because now you're telling other people how perceptive they're allowed to be, which isn't good for obvious reasons...
Dual-personality angles don't work in RP if people know that's what you're doing OOCly. Also as mentioned, as soon as someone knows the trick to it all of your work is shot in the foot; You're now a Criminal with a capital C and that means your IC NPC stuff is shot, your not able to RP in hubs because Heroes will go after you, and your only recourse is to lose (read: die/get arrested) or... no, that's basically it with strangers.
Maybe I just don't understand it. You're wanting to play a Garlean in a game where the Garleans are the bad guys. By and large, once that tidbit comes out, you're not going to be welcome anywhere in public. Imagine if this was WoW, and your character came out as a cross-faction sympathizer. Or if this was TOR and you're trying to play a Sith deep in Jedi territory. All of that build-up gets detonated the moment the line is crossed.
Secret villains should never be talked about in public, otherwise you're begging for trouble. I mean, it really comes down to a few things: You either get people who figure it out sooner than you expect, or you get people who just metagame in figuring it out, or you get into arguments OOC about how people couldn't have known yet, which is also difficult because now you're telling other people how perceptive they're allowed to be, which isn't good for obvious reasons...
Dual-personality angles don't work in RP if people know that's what you're doing OOCly. Also as mentioned, as soon as someone knows the trick to it all of your work is shot in the foot; You're now a Criminal with a capital C and that means your IC NPC stuff is shot, your not able to RP in hubs because Heroes will go after you, and your only recourse is to lose (read: die/get arrested) or... no, that's basically it with strangers.
Maybe I just don't understand it. You're wanting to play a Garlean in a game where the Garleans are the bad guys. By and large, once that tidbit comes out, you're not going to be welcome anywhere in public. Imagine if this was WoW, and your character came out as a cross-faction sympathizer. Or if this was TOR and you're trying to play a Sith deep in Jedi territory. All of that build-up gets detonated the moment the line is crossed.