I agree that it is all relative to each couple how much or how little communication they need or want to keep their LDR afloat!
For my hubby and I, we of course started with the "up till 5am" skype calls when we first met and for us the desire and ability to chat all night kept on throughout the 3/12 years we did LDR. We would do fun things on the weekend like "have a meal together" where we made the same food and he ate it for dinner and I ate it for lunch while we chatted on video. It sounds corny to a lot of people, but we wanted to stay as close to a "normal" relationship as we could and it was fun!
We played video games online together on Xbox, and backgammon on the computer. The big thing was though, that I called him on Skype and just left the computer on as I got ready for work/school and then again as I did homework or made dinner or whatever when I got home. Having a laptop I did it all hands free and was able to move about the house doing the same things I would have been doing, but It felt like he was in the room with me (like it would be if we had been physically together!) even if he was watching TV quietly. That is what real couples do, right! and that is what we wanted more than anything--to be together.
For some all of this would be extreme or excessive, but I still had an active social life as he was always sleeping during my evenings due to the time difference. I also want to note that now that we are happily married and living in the UK, we still have the same relationship in that we love to talk to each other and communication is a huge part of our dynamic. He calls me almost every day on his lunch break or his commute home from work just so we can get a daily "dose"
of each other and we go to bed 20 mins early so we can have time to chat before going to sleep. So all that work in the LDR really payed off for us in building some really strong foundations that continue today.
