I've been running a VTT 4e game since it came out, and before that, a bunch of us played in a VTT sendoff game for 3e. I play with friends, even if they're mostly internet friends, they're still friends and we still socialise and tell jokes and everything. We don't use skype, but we tend to RP a lot using text. We've got a novel worth of logs from the game, featuring the adventures of a cast of pcs that started with 6 and grew to two teams of five, not to mention a lot of oneshots set in the same setting. And yeah, there's plenty of facial expressions and moods and so fourth going on in those logs. They read like a novel- albet it a novel with over a dozen authors. But that's part of what makes rpgs so interesting.
There's plentty of jokes cracked in the chat as well, to the point where, about a year in when one of the players revealed a dramtic dark secret about their pc's past in a huge plot-twisty scene, another of the players thought he was joking. He actually typed "ahahahahaha, good one, as if your kindly old wizard could really be the notorious warlock jack of chains, ok so what really happens?" And everybody had to explain to him that yes, the old wizard the party had been taking for granted apparently really was a former evil warlock, as revealed by a magical heresy-detecting lantern that the PC has been subtly dodging for half the campaign.
In the players defence, we often joke around in the game, although not usuaully to that degree. I was a bit chagrined at the time, but the twist was suitably jaw-dropping, and had the desired impact all the same- and it's certainly one of those unique moments that make rpgs what they are, just as much as those moments can emerge in person. The roleplaying in the game is also top-notch, although it helps to have a great population of players to draw from. A population I would not have were I to look in my local area.
It's all well and good to talk about your ideal game, but nobody has an ideal game. There's always a trade-off, at least for those of us who are making new games with new people instead of playing the same old game with the same old people on our basement. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's quite presumptuous to act as if that's the be-all and end-all of the hobby, or that a given VTT game can't be a match for a given live game.
Each game is it's own creature, with it's own qualities. What people should be after is a good game, and they should not assume that this feature or that medium is always going to make for a better or worse game. Each game is unique, and the quality of a game is a combination of all sorts of factors, that collide in a far more complex fashion than 'offline better than online' or 'this genre is better than that genre'. Certainly, judgement calls can be made, system being an obvious example, but each of those factors also depends on the situation at hand.
Frankly, for most people, the main factor is not finding the right systerm, or medium, or setting, but the right people. And it's often very hard to do that locally. Playing with friends is fine, I do it myself, but which friends? Are they all friends? A game can be a great way to meet new friends. Either way, people to game with can be hard to find, and being able to look anywhere in the english speaking world, time zone permitting, is a very powerful recruitment tool.
Games come down to the people you play them with, the time you have, the play you get into- and so on and so on, and it's unwise to say the least to assume you're going to have less fun with an online game when for all you know, that might be the group of people, and the campaign, and various other factors, that gives you the best game you'll ever play.
