gettingit - the only advice I have in my rather limited experience of OD is that generally people don't turn out to be more attractive than their pictures, they tend to be less so in person. Always look at the worst photo and that's how they'll (probably) look in real life.
However it's not all about how someone looks, is it? There's a lot of pheremoney type stuff going on, confidence, body language too. If he's lovely via email he may be nice in real life. But everyone is more thoughtful and witty behind a keyboard.
I've met someone who looked okayish on their profile photos, and was really sparkling and witty via text message, then in person - nada. And I met someone else who looked okayish (okay, quite nice), had pretty much no email or text contact apart from my first email and her response, and when we met in person it was pretty much lightning bolts from the blue.
of course, then she disappeared off the face of the earth after the second date, but still..
So, I found that too many emails and texts can build up an expectation of how nice someone is, then in person you don't have so many icebreakers to talk about while you work out if you fancy them or not. And if you don't you're disappointed. Not enough emails and texts doesn't give you enough info on red flags (i.e. whether they're serious or not)
And even though they may be lovely online you can't know if you fancy them or not until you meet them