Keeping real life protected is a good idea. I would assume though that exchanging offline contact like text or email would then be a way to get to know people off-line which would be okay right? I figure there would be villages or cities/towns where killing isn't allowed and probably low level areas for newbies would also be off-limits as well, maybe some kind of police or moderation would be keeping tabs?

I know we wanted our character's in-game persona's to be higher than newbie status but should we consider making some quests or missions that would then bring them together? It would be dangerous but it could also have other aspects if people didn't want to deal with a lot of combat. We did have a division between those with fantasy or those with sci-fi tech if I recall, I think at one point we did think teaming up with the opposite character style would be necessary for some event.