Q: Will characters be able to accomplish any tasks while the player is offline?
Yes, most absolutely. One example is letting their character sell their items as a merchant, setting prices and even setting up a list of items they want to buy and the price they are willing to pay. We will also give the ability for magic users to set up their character to sell enchantments to players, like paying for a dispel or a buff. We will allow crafting to continue, so you can have your character work on his/her orders while you sleep. Many crafted item will take a * long * time to build. It never made sense to us that people could take materials and build a breastplate in 1 minute.
Q: Will characters be completely persistent?
Well if by that you mean their avatar is never logged off from the game then no. The user will have the option to completely log off, leaving no avatar behind. If they do leave their avatar in-game to buy/sell/etc then we will probably still log them out when the character sleeps, then back on when they wake up (by this I mean the character sleeps, not the RL person). Characters will be immune from PvP and PvE in these situations.
