Nobody is afraid but when it happens everybody is angry
But: as long as there are players who arent into RP or even dont know what RP in games is anyway you will be disrupted quite often or at worse case, put down due to gunfire.
I often see spontaneous roleplay in this game. As for example when A.Maniac spotted me in Modoc when i had the farmer model and he called me "gramps" and wanted all my money or he would kill me. After giving him all my stuff he and his buddys (even hubertus) kinda protected me "as i payed tribute to the town holders". We talked IC all this time.But those acts of roleplay blur together with the actual metagaming as there are no roleplaying rules. 15 Minutes later there were other guys in town who didnt say anything but started shooting (oh shi- CS! *bang bang* - i guess).
True RP could only work with people who are not into PvP.
PVP should not interfere with RP. In meaning, PVP should be based on RP. Those things should support eachother, work as one, not as two diffrent things in same world.
I used to play on RP server of Newer winter Nights. RP was there mostly during events. But here we have virtually no events or only silly ones like shooting hordes of npcs with free stuff without any real reward. No surprise that GMs are getting bored.