This also was a somewhat gradual change with two major shocks that rocked the boat substantially: The Ssethtide and slur ban
Before Ssethtide Bee was a small “LRP” community with relatively lax rules, but still a general atmosphere that involved roleplaying - people might be roleplaying James Bond and Spike Spiegel, but they were roleplaying nonetheless. (And there are pre-Sseth bans that prove this if you dig)
Ssethtide brought a massive and uncontrollable flood of players and resulted in a surge of new staff to keep up with the need. I used airquotes around LRP above because this surge redefined what LRP meant to the whole of the SS13 community. Bee was now firmly a non-RP server all about mechanics, and this is what people generally think LRP means now
Six months (give or take some change) pass and then Sage is introduced as a place for people to RP again. The people who are interested in RP are actively mocked by the majority of players and staff alike and RP players and staff are very much in the minority. Rules are still quite lax at this time and people generally just stay in character not unlike pre-Sseth Beestation to the best of my knowledge, complete with certain things still making you valid.
Two and a half months later slurs are banned, leading to something of mass exodus of both staff and players and even DDoS attacks on Golden but for some reason not Sage. Players flooded over to Sage from golden completely destroying the RP atmosphere and unfortunately in more than a handful of cases had existing staff support in doing so. (Xlyana was a head admin at the time of this thread and Rod was Senior. The ban was overruled and ashwalkers were given a free grief pass that lasted for months)
From there the staff situation fairly quickly shifted to being more RP oriented partially because sage was attracting folks that were more RP minded and partially because of the NRP aligned staff gradually leaving.