Oh I forgot to add that the adventure game is probably the most boring right now since it's almost completly based on pure roleplay, while as a noble you can get involved in wars, plots, tournament and such. Also adventurers die quite often
Everything is message based (take it as a play-by-mail style, even it's not exactly so) there's no IC (in character) chat, there's a irc quakenet channel at #Battlemaster but it's for OOC things.
I'll describe shortly the current situation on the various continents:
- The East Island is the first and older continent, it has a very long story started back in 2001 (entirly players driven of course). It lives the aftermath of a huge war that shattered the southern realms and it's living a peace time. For a new player, I don't suggest starting there since it might be quite boring and static right now, even if just happened a couple of border incidents that might escalate between Perdan and his neighbours.
-Atamara is probably a good place to start since it sees a big war between the centra alliance against the northern ones and a spin off of this major conflict in the Minas's Civil War in which I'm deeply involved. Cagilan Empire is the powerhouse right now and they are conquering Eston, so both of those realm offers lots of opportuinities for a newcomer. Minas Leon, my actual realm in atamara, is another good place since we are expanding and will soon face the final siege of our enemy capitol city. Barony of Makar is said to be a fun realm to play, they roleplay as viking. Darka, Coria and Talerium are also realm involved in the war so they might be fine too, but I don't know much about them.
-Dwilight is the youngest island. There the medieval atmosphere is more strict (you can find some info there
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Serious_Medieval_Atmosphere ) and it's the most dynamic continent so far: the North is bound together by the Sanguis Astroism, the most influencial religion of the island. The center-east sees another civil war ongoing bewteen the Lurias while the center-west is federated into the Moot which stands against the southern powerhouse Aurvandil. Aurvandil is a reall well characterized realm, with its own defined cultere and some very good and active players. Terran also seems a good realm.
-Far East honestly I've never played there so I know very little about it. It shares a slighty different EC map, but I can't really say anything about the realm there, just that there should peace almost everywhere.
-The Colonies is a slower paced island, you get only one turn per day. Lukon there is dominating everything else and there are OOC talks going on about who resolve this. I don't suggest playing there
There's also Beluatarra, but you can't start a character there so unless someone is interested I won't talk about it