One of the major things that I personally dislike, is as Mouse mentioned, wars kind of suck. It's a PvP game as much as it's an RP game, and to progress, you have to fight - but sometimes you can't. If things continue as they are, in a similar way to end game Spires, there will be no way for new factions, whether based on world events or a group of players coming up with an idea, to fight and grow at a rate that will make for an interesting plot.
That said there are ways to fix it, at least I think so.
One of the things that have seemed to always be pushed is Guilds and Dungeons. This is something I've literally heard brought up constantly by Chance, or other players, since Eternia 1. Do you know what sucks about them though? What do you do as a guild? Nothing. You create a mercenary group and wait for war. You create a Knight group and wait for war. You create a research and development team, you wait for an event admin. You create a monster-hunting group, you want for an event admin. There's no way to effectively remedy this in the current climate, because of how things are handled.
My suggestion? Section up the map.
No not split it up, or make it larger, as the map is a current complaint of the game. Rather have regions, sections of the map, with specific hot spots that offer various rewards. These are places that need to be controlled by guilds or factions for a specific reward, that contributes to the war or city of their allegiance. If you control the Waystone for instance, as a guild, and you're Osronan aligned? +x Amount of gold to your Guild, +x amount of gold to your ruling faction for expansions or huge voyages to even more valuable spots, giving your faction a cool world event chain after you've gathered up so much gold.
City leader doesn't take your guild with all you've contributed? Fuck you then, I declare Waystone as my own point, cutting off that city's gold gain for that region.
It isn't limited only to gold gain either. Do you hold the Occult forest? + Occult Power/Defense depending on alignment to your faction, and + Occult Power/Defense to your city.
What would this add?
Micro battles. Guild vs Guild, Faction vs Faction, fights over regions on a weekly basis. It gives autonomy to groups that would otherwise be waiting for their city leader to give a command. It gives a guideline for wars and gives various bonuses to factions to help them win the wars. It doesn't take away from RP, in fact, it forces people to be in areas other than their houses or hidden away to continue to hold them from invasions.
What would be required?
Adding new structures or places of importance to the map. It could be so easy as a divine incident happens, or something beneath Esshar is triggered, causing the eruption of these monuments Breath of the Wild tower style. No time skip, because time skips never fix anything, just a simple cool world event that causes a rat race of guilds sprinting to own a region.
You'd need to set up guidelines, to keep one city from being able to just hoard all of the hot spots. Multiple battles in a single day perhaps? Maybe limiting how many battles a group can join every week? Osrona has powerhouses right now for instance, but if they spread too thin they'd be unable to defend every spot they'd want to keep, forcing guild and faction interaction from an early point.
This is what I was personally expecting from Spires, with the gigantic islands that got rarely visited.
Do I think this is a perfect plan? No. There's plenty of room for fucking it up. Do I think it would be a step in the right direction? Yes. As of right now, Esshar is one of the more boring continents we've visited just for a lack of things to do and no constant power dynamic shifting that Spires and Prologue had.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
Now tell me I'm stupid.