Why are you painting a reduction in rules like it will suddenly cause everyone to wildly attack each other with spawn weapons? Pointing the to extremes will not benefit your nor my argument.
I don't play PW to "pwn noobs" (although it happens anyways), I play(ed) PW because it provided a backdrop, a reason, a motivating factor to the battles or events. As much as I hate it when people tout how long they've been around on PW, I remember a time in which people were motivated to fight for causes, hold celebrations for victory, stand in line for grand speeches, stand against your enemies in a glorious but hopeless last stand. These things don't happen any more. The only difference between then and now are the rules. Every single PW feature added since the first version would greatly benefit the things that used to happen. However, with all of the rules, players are more worried about collecting large sums of cash than actually playing the mod. If you log onto the server, and look around for a few minutes, you can clearly see that nothing is happening. In fact, I guarantee that nothing is happening. Players are too afraid to lose their "hard earned" cash to actually do anything.
The reason rules are the cause of this is almost solely connected to the rules protecting the weak. Since the serfs and crafters no longer have to worry about so-called "randomers" (due to administrative protection), they have absolutely no reason to form groups with other players. They collect hundreds of thousands of denars, store it in their bank, and log out after a short period of time because grinding is boring. The next day, they come back and do the same thing. And the next day. And the next. So, day after day, we see the exact same thing happening on our server (and every other server with RP rules): nothing. The guys you claim to be warmongering, trollish idiots are the same guys who would lead factions into battle or stand by your side in combat should you be the leader. Instead, however, due to lack of leadership, they form small groups with their close friends. Due to the group's unwillingness to grind, they train as outlaws and begin to attempt to rob the serfs (who are carrying sometimes dozens of thousands of denars, completely unprotected in a RP-sense). When the serfs get robbed, they whine to administrators, who in turn give them money back for being "randomed" (despite showing no attempt to protect themselves via in character means, such as hiring guards, carrying a weapon, or using side routes to avoid main traffic).
This brings us to my final point for now, administrative refunds and banking. Countless times, refunds are given out to players. The reason it started is to appease them when the "rule breaking randomer troll" didn't actually break a rule, and the administrator wants the "victim" to shut up. So, the player thinks to himself "Hey, I can get free money for doing nothing but complaining in administrator chat!". This creates an even further, deeper reliance on administrative money and not playing the game via in-character means. Complicating the issue even moreso is the banking. Banking allows players to horde unbelievable sums of money, with absolutely no threat of losing it. Because of these large sums of money in the bank, they have even less of a reason to protect their in-game, in-character investments via in-character, roleplay means. The final factor contributing to lack of player involvement in in-character methods is refunds for server resets. Not only are we as administrators relying entirely on the player's word for the amount, we're not treating all of the players in a fair and balanced manor. Even if you gave refunds for the next week after a reset, you still would not successfully refund every player who lost money. Adding to the problem is the fact that you just artificially created hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of denars worth of cash, without any raw material collection or crafting taking place. This creates a considerable problem because the players have all this cash, with nothing to spend it on, and no will to actually contribute to the economy we, as administrators, just completely destroyed.
Overall, the ironic thing about the whole situation is that your roleplay-enforcing/enhancing rules actually prevent roleplayers from properly playing their roles, prevents any kind of real gameplay from taking place, and encourages players to not play the game due to the lack of anything interesting happening for weeks at a time (outside of administrator events, which are funded entirely by administrators and give the players no risk of losing what they have).
Do you have TS3/a Microphone? No