Factions are nowhere near a thing from the past. Where you have PvP, you have team vs team in one way or the other. Even in sports when you see your favourite club playing, you get this faction pride. Those games that just randomly mix people together and call them team blue and red feel so poorly designed, it doesn't motivate me at all to play these kinds of games or modes. Having factions is just that nice little extra to give more depth to everything. Good vs bad, light vs dark, freedom vs rules, angels vs demons, knights vs monsters, werewolves vs vampires, you get the idea. Factions are simply cooler and makes me much more motivated to play, if I can view the boys and girls I play with as battlebrothers and sisters fighting side by side for victory. The "red vs blue, highest points win" kind of deals are so boring, its way too simplified to actually fit the complexity that RPG's and MMO's in general consist of.

We don't need less faction wars, we need BETTER faction wars. I would even go so far and stop calling the current Cyrodiil a faction war. Faction hopping is so out of control nowadays its not fun anymore, everyone is a turncoat only interested in PvDoor or helping their friends on the other sides with double teaming, map flipping, emp boosting or scroll trading. This is not faction war to me.