The community of persistent worlds still exists, but became significantly smaller.
Because of the lack of players, many of the more hardcore and heavily ropleplay orientend PWs either stopped existing or softened their rules somewhat to attract casual roleplayers or sometimes even action players who just throw in an in-character line from time to time. There might be still PWs with very strict rules out there, but what good is that if you're the only one logged in most of the time?
The only sever I can come up with is Arelith. It is definately a roleplay server and you can even choose that you want your character to perma-die after dying ten times (most people don't do this, though). I might not be the best person to tell you, though as I don't play on Pws anymore as I find the limitations of it too immersion breaking to have fun role playing there for a longer period of time.
