Agreed. Lore is important and I love lore, but time and time again a huge chunk of the community and even blizzard themselves have said "gameplay mechanics > lore". Making groups would be chaos but it would be amazing because you'd never be out of people to do anything with. It doesn't even have to be a world thing, just instanced content, why not?
The only reason behind the segregation of alliance and horde is have a tiny motive behind their pvp, because lore wise, the two factions don't have an open war since the dawn of times (TBC era). Local conflicts or skirmishes are understandable, after all humans are involved, you can't expect peace, just like in real life, but considering that they took down together Illidan, Kil'Jaden, Arthas (and Algalon), Deathwing, a couple old Gods, a truckload of demons (twice in some cases), etc. it doesn't make fucking sense anymore, in fact it's pretty much stupid at this point.
I'd implement a system like EQ2 had: faction are separate on paper, but they can communicate, play together and even be part of the same guild, with the caveat that players could have troubles visiting the opposing faction cities and eventual guild halls or similar shared structures. You could mantain aggressive guards in all outer world outposts, because it'd create the "local situation" that can lead to open world PvP and I'm even so bold to think they could come up with a real faction system, where you can gain and lose faction EQ style, allowing players to enter the "ex-enemy" cities, but still not the world outposts, news don't travel so fast after all!.
There could be some grinding included for the dedicated, letting people obtain the title "Worldwide Bitch" once all capital cities are accessible (or something more intelligent that my lame pun attempts).
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