There has been a drive of late to revitalize Atamara. I have been driving towards it for a while, and now am very happy to be pushing it.
As for me, I have two characters in Tara. One is the ruler. The other is...not. He recently joined an allied realm to help them out, but is coming back home now due to...well...the coming excitement...
In general the second character has been a second character. He actually blossomed a lot when he joined the other realm. But when he's part of Tara I don't do a lot of role playing with him. I've played the game the way the game is played and used him mostly as a way of helping make Tara stronger. If it is the choice of the devs to disallow this, I understand. I don't think it is the right decision, especially when we are already running low on nobles. Further reducing the noble count will just break the game down quicker. But if that is what they want then that is what they want. *shrugs*
I also have two characters on Beluaterra. My situation there is completely and totally different though. My one character is the High Priestess of the dominant religion of the continent. AKA EVERY region has believers, and MOST regions have a majority of believers in that religion. This is after the Daimons missed ONE temple during the Third (I think) invasion. From that, the religion has grown to...well...everywhere. Nobles from most of the nations are in the religion. And she is...well...she has a very defined character. She is a peacenik. She is a tree hugger. She is a priest. She is an ambassador. And until an assassin at war with her realm stabbed her, she was a banker, getting food to the people. She is a member of a realm because you really can't do much as a rogue. But her loyalties are...not to her realm. Her stated and acted on goal is to unite humanity in preparation for another Daimon assault. Which means in her mind being loyal to all humans not just to the realm she happens to live in.
My other character on that continent is a warrior. Pure and simple. The best use of trees is making bows and arrows. Or shields if you do the infantry thing. Siege engines are good too. Poles for banners. Kindling for use against enemy towns. You know. Fighting for his nation and happily slinging insults and such at the enemy.
The point is that I have two entirely different games going on in Beluaterra. One is Priestly. And for those who have never played priests, they play much more like adventurers. No troops to fight with. No scouts. No nothing that would let them see what is going on. You spend most of your time blind to what is going on around you as you spend most of your time preaching and talking to commoners. For a long time I only had the priest in Beluaterra and as a player I didn't know much about what was going on with the wars and such. Most priests in the game that I know of are played by people who also have a normal noble on the same continent. Once I brought my second character in to play as a warrior, I know my enjoyment of the game went up a lot.
If people are forced to choose between having a priest and a normal noble, I think I know what most people are going to choose. And after this game has spent so many years pushing the religion angle of the game, that is going to be very sad. Because most people are not going to pick the priest. And the religions are going to drop like flies when they run out of priests.
As I said above, I am against lowering the 2 character limit to a 1 character limit. I think it will only hurt the game. I could see a one character per realm limit. Or a one character of each type per realm limit. But a hard 1 character limit is just going to cause a general collapse of the game in my opinion.
And I can say without reservation that it will greatly affect my ability to play the game at all due to the choices I'm going to have make if I wish to continue playing at all.