We’re a small but dedicated community. So, yes, people are still playing.
As for your specific questions:
Character movement is a combination of mouselook and WASD or cursor keys as per your preference.
You may have up to 8 characters on your account. New accounts start with a single slot, further slots can be unlocked with aurum (the game’s premium currency, which can be either bought directly for real money or exchanged for currency earnable in-game).
Everyone plays on the same game servers. There’s no separation by language or region.
There’s no player housing or significant crafting in the traditional sense.
There are mounts in the form of custom sprints.
Who the actual faction leaders are is debatable.
Chatrooms? There are default (regional, built-in) and custom (global) text chat channels. There’s no built-in voice chat.