Not necessarrily the faction WAR, as I found those stories didn’t pan out very well.
But the rivalry and competition between factions, both story-wise and player-wise, made the game more fun and dynamic.
Dragonflight isn’t a bad expansion functionally, but the story is SO cringe. All of this endless, soothing, cooperation and “everythging is great when we work TOGETHER” nonesense makes Disney movies look more dramatic.
Can we please bring it back on some level next expansion?
Unga bunga my side good your side bad wasn’t interesting and felt forced.
Y’all really think the people who rule the islands were gunna sit around and let us bring entire militaries here?
It’d be more confusing if we were fighting here
How can it feel forced when it’s literally the reason this franchise exists?
When you run out of reasons to fight and have to try to manufacture something which feels horribly out of place in a game where you’re able to group/play cross-faction.
Welcome to world of Peacecraft. Just waiting until the next big bad tries to destroy and/or take over Azeroth.
Always has been.
Also just for lulz
Outside of BFA, and some of MoP
Faction conflict was a back burner aspect
As I stated in my OP which you didn’t read, I don’t necessarily miss the WAR, just the rivalry part.
EDIT: And there’s always reasons to fight: limited resources, political squabbles, and old grudges to name a few.
But that said, Vanilla, BC, and Wrath had no actual open warfare, but the rivalry was alive and thriving. That’s what I want back.
I won’t go into much detail: iykyk. But what WoW needs is a Domination-like system like Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.
Imagine weekly rotating PvP objectives littered around the entire game map: EK, Kalimdor, Outlands, Pandaria, etc, and the ability for one faction to “Dominate” the map, granting that Faction bonuses. Add a meter onto the minimap, boost rewards for the underdog faction if they fight back.
Only real caveat to make this work is merging enough players together where this system is balanced, without losing server identity. And truly, it may just be plain far too late into WoW’s life for something like this, and it may of needed to happen a long time ago. Just my two cents: I’m well aware this idea isn’t flawless.
Shut up you greedy horde goblin.
Go count your filthy greasy coins somewhere else… 
I’ve noticed the dev team picking odd characters across the Dragon Isles to show up later, perhaps they could use the tension with Blastbang and Sparkclamp. 
edit: Warlands feels close.
We need more dragonflight stories not more of legion or whatever else expansions I am tired of those type of expansion. The faction concept is discontinued confirmed by the story team starting in dragonflight faction related stories is not moving forward which I am so glad that we are finally moving away from those type of stories.
Dragons never stopped the Horde or death knights. It’s not like they have the power to stop us anyway.
Why?
You just want Good vs Evil: Round 14?
You can still have those, but the faction rivalry adds a little spice and flavor.
The next rivalry should be an olympics-type event where classes from each faction compete to find out who has the better shamans, paladins, druids, etc.
Just like in Warcraft 3 when Archimonde showed up to touch the world tree on Mount Hyjal.
The faction conflict was consistently the source of the worst writing wow had to offer.
And since the factions were also tied to the players, Blizzard were stuck in a situation where no matter what none of the sides could truly win. (Though that doesn’t excuse Blizzards inability to write any nuance or politics into the both factions).
Also the design from the factions were a mess from it’s inception. Exactly what did the night elves gain from joining an alliance they had no interactions or relations to? Tyrande had a brief encounter with the Silver Hand while dealing with Illidan, while Maiev fought the Blood Elves (whom by that point were no long part of the alliance).
Quite frankly the game should have never had factions to begin with, and rather had Humans start in Theramore with Stormwind being a neutral/hostile city ruled by Onyxia.
And no, the factions didn’t make wow super popular, since nearly every server became lopsided. WoW became popular simply because back then it was one of the best chat-rooms out on the market.
I’d argue it only got worse without it we got SL and now DF.
That is another issue. Simply Blizzard lacks writers that knows how to tell a larger story. WoD was a mess, legion was a mess (Seriously how did we even survive argus), BFA and SL was a nightmare…
Something I’ve noticed like with A song of ice and fire, or FFXIV/FFTactics, there writers are educated in history, and it shows. While gods knows what credentials Blizzard writers has…