I'm going to respond to a few ideas expressed here most of which I don't really agree with.
1. The Forums create the sense of needing to participate in order to advance in game.
I feel this is completely untrue. I had a very prominent character well before ever visiting the forums. I actually got into the forums to participate in feature requests and development discussions because I frequently come up with game ideas and want to share them.
2. Abusive forum users and people who can't differentiate between character and player.
I've seen this a bit I can only think of one heated argument that I've had myself. I remember in a thread someone complaining that "People who play in Astrum are cowards" not that their characters are cowards but that the actual people are. I haven't noticed this very often. If it is a problem then some moderators would help.
3. Abuse of OOC information.
Again I haven't seen this first hand too much. There are times when I see people discussing things in the forum which I think would be more interesting if they shared them in character. How damaging OOC info is depends on how good people are at RPing dramatic irony.
Another problem mentioned was explaining the character motivations you play by. For starters the limited number of people on the forum makes this less of a problem. Second I don't think its necessarily a detriment. I'm a very experienced roleplayer and GM for pen and paper games. I like to see these kind of discussions because it shows my players are really thinking about who their characters are. I don't think it's a pure case of OOC information, remember when you talk to people in real life you learn a great deal through body language. On top of that presumably there's a whole world of gossip which supposedly goes on in the background in game. Therefore a player might not be picking up on a personality trait that a character absolutely should pick up on.
