Bernice, if Fencer did that then the friends list would be almost the same as the on-line opponents, and I for one have so many games going, if only a quarter of my opponents were online, it would take up a lot of my page to list them all as friends.
Its only one click to see who is online that you are playing. A lot of my friends here I dont have games going with all the time, and I think its nice to have them seperate. (Just my personal opinion!)