The factions of World of Warcraft don't mean as much nowadays—which isn't necessarily a bad thing. MMOs are having a tough enough time without splitting their playerbase and, furthermore, Azeroth has faced so many cosmic threats that continuing the faction war nonsense while the world's about to end would be comically stupid.
But there was a time where it meant a whole lot, forming a part of the original game's identity—and given the importance of faction warfare in the original RTS, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a huge part of WoW's development from the early days, too.
