I just celebrated my 3rd year with my boyfriend the first of the year, and we met online (on a furry website even xD) There is even a fairly large age difference between us (only 6 years, but I was kinda young when we met) and currently I am living with him and his parents/brother while he finishes his degree (I'm doing online school). I only moved here last August, but he had been to my home to visit both the summer a year after we met and for my graduation last summer. We are currently very happy and are very much in love.
I think the key to an online relationship as mentioned is the willingness to spend time together (but not too much! We both still had lives/school/work!) , trust each other and communicate. That's sort of amusing that we worked out so well because he was just getting over a disaster of a relationship which had also been online, and I was getting over a bad offline relationship and we are both VERY paranoid people, possibly clinically so. I'll admit it was rocky at first but we were honest with each other and developed a close friendship before we took anything very far. Communication was the key, and still is, we both knew things might not work out but it was worth a shot.
Honestly I had no idea I could be this in love with someone...
I had still loved him, for a long time before we met, I would have done, and did do a lot of things that no one else could get me to go, just for his sake (good things! like doing better on school work so people wouldn't think he was bringing me down) but I will be honest those feelings deepen almost every day. That happens with people who have only known each other offline from what I hear though..
I will admit that our relationship was more secure after he visited because we were both a little scared that we just wouldn't 'mesh' well. But we did, and it was great.
Another key was, Imo, we got to know the other person's family. I woulds sit with my, (or my mom's. before I got mine) laptop in the living room with my parents and chat just with him or all four of us talking together about things, his father would often come into his room while we were talking and just join the conversation (his mom is shy so I never got to talk to her much before I moved). Luckily my parents like him and his like me or else we may never have gotten to see each other, or at least so soon.
I would like to think I would have waited for him though, I've never connected with or had so much in common with someone as him, even as friends.
Still hard though, Skype and phonecalls and sheer stubbornness was about all that got me through, and the fact that he's just plain WORTH it... he is worth the effort I am putting into this relationship and I guess it goes the other way as well, even though I don't feel worth it sometimes.
Could I have been hurt? Well duh...You can ALWAYS be hurt... but I've been hurt far worse by offline relationships that even the one online one I had before current times.
As for keeping things online? If the people are happy, why the hell not? I'm all for: If it makes you happy, and doesn't make some one else's life worse, go for it!
Just my two cents... it gets me little frustrated to see people dismiss things so easily