As a roleplayer, I can say it's just a fun experience that would normally never happen in real life. Roleplaying is fun IMO, although I respect your opinion.
The entertainment is pretty much the only gain for me.
Also.
Further into the roleplaying problems.
Problems that can hurt some of the people in the RP or kill the entire RP.
Yep, they are always left unchecked. There are 3 of us in a 10 person RP that has a problem that some of them noticed.
None of the 3 that had the problems noticed it themselves. I was one of the 3.
After the problems started getting serious and the RP gone a little bit down the stuffter.
They finally told us after a week. TOO LATE. And when they told us they told it in a way that a flame war started.
I didn't even say anything, the other 2 took it down into a flame war.
It ended up killing the entire RP. Oh and i lost plenty of friends somehow because of the flame war i never joined in.