I'm not passing judgement because I've played knowing who was playing particular allies/enemies - but just knowing makes a difference. A character suddenly becomes a known quantity rather than a semi-mystery - and it affects how you approach them, the familiarity with which you approach them. Gaining trust in the capabilities of an ally to stick by you and offer support in duress is a process that, IN CHARACTER playing, takes a long time to build - just managing to log in at the same time as someone you don't know OOC is a feat. Knowing who plays this ally totally circumvents this process - jumping you ahead from wary ally that communicates off and on through tells to bosom buddies that are always grouped.

As far as enemies, I don't know about you, but myself, I can't help but ponder the identities of key enemies, and work on knowledge of how they reacted with previous characters (most times I'm wrong I was convinced Mesernyk was Chris Warren, for example). If you make something familiar to you, you gain some semblance of control over the variables in a text game with 100 strangers.

That doesn't bother me so much because CF is a pretty tight community centered around a common interest, so it's almost unavoidable to know/have a really good guess who is playing whom. Myself, I don't think I've ever played a character that at least a few friends didn't guess or know who I was just from patterns - the player base isn't THAT big, and the truly original people are pretty rare.

I don't really care that you guys do this, but to say it gives you no advantage is mistaken. It's a huge advantage even if it's just something that makes you enjoy the game more - OTHERWISE YOU WOULDN'T DO IT.

The only thing that has ever bothered me were situations like the early Be-mused/Arolin tag teams. Like one time when I held Zharradam and was whacking on him, and Arolin was nowhere in the area - and suddenly, lo and behold, Arolin appears out of nowhere, "somehow" knowing his buddy was in danger. Basically when you communicate with each other OOC when there are no means to do it IC.

Timed log ins via irc/icq, calling for help while your character is unable to via irc/icq, working around not being able to communicate in certain quest areas - basically compensating for extenuating circumstances In Character, these are things that I think we should all agree to avoid. And I think in general we do.