I guess somewhere along the storyline the conflict will grow into a fight over cities/territories.
I just hope that Funcom have some experience in these matters, because with reference to Factions in UO there are some problems in this.

In UO you captured a sigil for the town you wished to take
over and guarded it for 12 hours I think. After that you had the
town for about 3-4 days.
This did put a great strain on ppl though because 12 hours
often meant that you had to stay up all night or make some
kind of night-shifts.
This was ok in the beginning but after awhile ppl got pretty
tired, many upping their game-time by 200-300%!
So unless these take-overs are organized well, only a core of
ppl will be able to participate.
And then we have the RL timezones, which is already a
problem for those wanting to be part of the events. These
events seem to be placed to be convenient for the ppl around
the server timezone. But what about ppl in other timezones?

But nevertheless Factions was the best time I had in UO and I hope this will repeat itself in AO.

Mirkan
Clan Soldier