If we were to cut down the number of factions, that would drastically increase the amount of players per faction, which would most likely allow us to get more of the epic battles that have been missing of late. In a scenario like this suggests, leadership roles would entail more.

Say when a leader dies, it hurts the cabal's morale by a lot (Say something really noticeable, like 30 or 40, instead of the current minor morale bonus/deficits for raiding). Also, make it beneficial for the cabal to have their leaders about, to counteract the effects of a leader death. Leaders could have powers that are aimed more towards increasing the effectiveness of their citizens (good), or aimed at sucking the power of their subordinates for themselves (evil)

This would be simplifying the game down to a significant degree, but I don't know if it makes sense to keep on doing business as usual while our numbers are beginning to decline towards the point of no return. I generally see 8-12 people on my pk at hero, and with 7 cabals(?) and plenty of options that don't involve cabals, the wars really don't feel like wars. With 10 people on pk, and 250 areas, the only way to reliably seek out combat is to have a class with far reaching senses/attacks, or raiding cabals back and forth. We need a driving force to bring people together again, like they once were.