There was not much roleplaying atleast early Atamara. Things were a lot in character, but it was a lot player talk too. We discussed a lot game mechanics and strategies and number crunching in game too. Mostly that discussion were at IRC, but also important parts were discussed in game too. But gotta admit, i dont know much outside Darka/CE/Tara/Eston early Atamara.
Those realms were lead by ex Utopia players, more or less hard core strategists and net addicts, which prolly explains that they dominated Atamara. And game evolved all the time to limit advantages of being online all the time. Many HC players worked hard to find advantages from battlereports, behaviour of battle code...
Slowly RP thins started to become more, silly nicks were forbidden and later even enforced to those old farts to change their names to more proper. I bet majority of Atamara players at early stage were strategy players, atleast leaders. They were lightly roleplaying their characters. Later when realms started to have some cultures, news papers, religions it turne more and more to roleplaying game... and all kind of restrictions appeared. Capital change, you needed to border regions to take them over, you were not able to ban people for lagging (Early Darka Elders bansihed 1 player every week by shout voting, just to keep people following orders, remember those times there was influx of players).
Mayby this started as RP, but quite early it was brutal strategy game atleast for a while
And some point it had good balance, these days... strategy things have been made a bit too hard. Game has too much restrictions as mechanic wise.
