Is it possible to maintain contact with the people you enjoy having contact with without using the site? I made a very good friend a long time ago (might have been as much as 8-10 years ago, not sure, I'm not counting) through an online game. At some point we both stopped playing the game and only logged in to use the internal message service to talk to each other. At some point we exchanged email adresses and stopped using the website. Now we mostly have contact through What's App.
To be honest, in the beginning our contact did falter and we barely had any contact for a year or two. First because, after a few initial emails neither of us wrote the other (whereas when still using the game's message service we exchanged usually at least 20 messages a day), then because when I emailed her, it ended up in her spam box. But now we have a healthy online friendship.