The best writing I've ever seen on BM was during a period from around 2006 to 2007 in the Far East when, for whatever reason, there were a lot of medieval roleplayers around. Lasanar, Ethiala, Nighthelm, SoC, and early Cathay. They dug the feudal system and intrigue and politics in a way that a lot of players today seem to find boring or secondary. I would've spent a few bucks to see that arranged in an ebook. This was when we wrote things like the RP Primer and the wiki entry on Oaths os Fealty. Not everybody agreed with this stuff but those who didn't had alternatives and it was discussed a lot because there was a lot of RP going on.
For better or worse, most of those players moved on. I spoke with about a half-dozen of them during and afterwards and their consensus was that BM itself was forcing them into playing a certain way through vehicles like peasants kicking out lords or Too Much Peace (though TMP wasn't a big problem then). I first heard the term 'PeasantMaster' around this time.
I bring this up not to re-make their point, because I think they already made it with their departure, but to identify one thing that I witnessed that is responsible for the reduction in RP (particularly in good RP). The retention rate isn't very good. Not every realm on every continent has always had much RP, but usually half the realms I played in back then did. Today, none of them do. Some of them have interesting stuff going on and are still fun (for me) but none of them have stories like they used to.
I'd pick up Beyond the Blight and read through it if I saw it in a store (since I haven't played much on BT to know what things are like there) but I wouldn't pay to read what passes for the RP scene today.
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