Like Warren said above, it's not really limited to MMOs, more to the internet. Distance and anonymity make it far easier to forget that you're not just dealing with some pixels on a screen but an actual person. This is also probably a broad generalization, but you can also assume that if someone spends a great deal of time online they probably aren't very good at social interaction to begin with. That may not always be the case, but in my experience it has been more often than it has not been. Many people turn to MMOs as a method of escape, and more specifically people turn to RP as an even deeper method of escape. Because of that I think it's easy for people to simple fall into the mindset 'out of sight, out of mind.'
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