So we can IM while the game is open, and 'local chat' too... but there should be a way to message people who are offline, right? Or does this already exist and I've missed it somehow?
YES. When the game is down, a lot of people post comments to one person in their update stream. If they had a way to send those messages to the person and not as a general public message to the world it would really make going through updates easier. :)
This would certainly be cool, but being that the game will be going live 24/7 sometime in the near future, I doubt they would want to waste their time on this (and once the game is open all the time you can send mail to a friend who isn't online at the time).
-1 on this, though I understand the idea, I need yet another inbox to check like I need a hole in the head. Unless it forwarded to my actual email address, I don't want to have to check another site, personally.
Just to note that this topic was started 5 months ago. Since then, we now do have in-game mail delivery, so that while playing, you can contact someone who is offline.