I play quite a bit of PnP RPGs, and they're a ton of fun. But I don't exactly role play any huge amount... I guess it's more like a video game to me, only the character you play is more "you" than in most video games since all the decisions are governed by you and not preset paths. No other games let you randomly decide to spend an hour describing how you dig a giant hole filled with poisoned bear traps and spikes and gasoline to catch a tyrannid.
I have also dabbled in online roleplaying when I was younger, as well. That's a little different. There's not really any point to it, like in an RPG (there's a story and a goal to that). I guess the goal is to just immerse yourself in a certain lore and pretend that you're living in that universe for awhile. Which is just as much an escape as a movie or a book, but feels more "real" since, like with a PnP RPG, it's actually you "experiencing" these things. It just takes a good imagination to conjure up the imagery.
I got out of it, ultimately, because to me it feels silly as fuck to roleplay. Like I said, there's no point, really, so a lot of the time you're "standing" around with a group of people talking about your character or another person's character because that's all there is to talk about because there's nothing going on. Maybe there are more organized roleplaying groups or something, but it all seemed pretty frivolous. Except if you want to do a lot of cyber sex. Ton of that going on.
There's also no better place to find drama than a roleplaying group. The problem with being your character means some people can get really emotionally invested in them, and then relationships start based on characters and people can be unable to separate real life from the "game", people can be way too serious about everything and ugh. It can get hideous and ugly.
PnP RPGs are really totally different in my experience. To me, it's akin to getting together with a bunch of friends to watch a football game or playing Smash Brothers or something. You get together with your buddies, buy a bunch of junk food and just hang out playing a game for a few hours. Maybe we're playing wrong because we mostly just define our actions and are not seriously getting into our characters and speaking from their perspective every single time and everything, but it's just a lot of fun. To us it's more about the socializing than being an elven ranger/Cadian Kasrkin/Mandalorian supercommando for awhile. Though it is sometimes fun to break into character. =P
It's different strokes for different folks, in the end. What works for some doesn't work for others. Blah blah blah.