Faction Warfare became this giant inescapable elephant in the room for the RP community; it put many RPers in an awful spot, because here was this thing that was the most obvious and natural IC way to support your faction, but then gets no attention from CCP on the million ways in which it was structurally and PF awful, and neglected for what, 5 or 6 years now with no movement or changes?
Everyone who participates eventually ends up looking like idiots for doing the same thing for 5 years and having their empires let in all sorts of groups that it wouldn't, etc. N
It's a black hole of RP; very difficult to escape it's influence on the rest of the scene.
Look at it this way; all these people sucked into the endless slog that doesn't go anywhere are roleplayers who in an earlier time would have joined other RP corps with varying interests and more dynamic content. When you aren't getting trapped into an endless cycle of shit that doesn't go anywhere you are forced to come up with your own adventures and arcs and events between players. Not only that, the people who aren't trapped in that environment at least had a critical mass of other people to DO creative things with who weren't perma-stuck in trench warfare.
It's this half-assed stand in for content that sucks all the air out of the room.