@LigH: Well... techincally, I'm not making plans for any long term playing. I just came back for one last hurrah out of nostalgia. However, providing I don't get shut down prematurely, I at least plan on holding a nice big event before I go. I'll need a lot of players participating though, all plot and no RPers or helpers makes for a very sad event.
@Miomo: And don't worry about not RPing with me Miomai, I more or less got the impression of some such thing. I was actually not paying close attention to the client at that time, I was working on materials for my event. The only reason I did the emote was so that you two wouldn't end up saying more out loud than you would want another character to overhear. I know how it is to get used to RPing everything out loud simply because there is rarely anyone around to overhear it.
@Bilbous: You can definitely talk about current events from stuff posted in common places, the problem was getting people to talk to you. I've logged in a few times since I left and most of those times I just left, after hours of idling, because I got tired of trying to drag RP out of people... I mean really, one time I was standing in a group of people crafting and RPing at the smithy... I know that if they saw each others comments, they could see mine. I got almost completely ignored when I asked for help ICly. That's the kind of stuff that will make people stop struggling with the matter. Someone already new to RP would find that too much to try to overcome, it's already hard to start RPing, and someone already used to it has little reason to pull teeth with a character they don't know...
That being said, things do seem to be slowly improving. I think people are making an extra effort to RP and to spread out. I'm seeing RP happening in more places more often now. even the player count seems to be rising a tiny bit. I saw over 40 players on line during the time when it was normally only 30 something players... Given some extra pushes, I imagine a small recovery of the RP scene might be possible.