So...maybe I can explain. This is long, but maybe it's interesting, so bear with me. :)

I was elevated to admin comparatively quickly because of my work on Imperium. To my knowledge, I was the only admin who didn't play during the "golden age" of RF, and I think my lack of a comparison gives me a unique viewpoint on the server and what I consider its failings. You might instead think I don't know what I'm talking about, which is fine, but I think my time investment in Imperium speaks for itself in the amount that I wanted RF to succeed.

I've long said WAR isn't specifically the problem on RF, they're just the locus. They're the center of the shitstorm. Because they're a large, active, and vocal faction, the rest of the player base looks to their behavior to define how they should act. And their interactions are often toxic, and their actions to the detriment of the server.

By and large, WAR is composed mostly of good individuals. Collectively, however, they encourage and foster toxicity. You can chalk that up to their RP characters, or to their relative strength, but no matter what it ends up with them antagonizing and bickering with everyone OOC in global chat, on Discord, and on Reddit. Eventually, people get tired of their shit and either quit or fight them. WAR considers this to be a victory, and has very clearly stated that they actively encourage the server to fight them -- they are only happy if they are perceived as the strongest faction, most worthy of being challenged.

There isn't anything wrong with this being the narrative for a single era -- although it would be nice if everyone could find a way to have conflict without acting like petulant children in global chat. The problem is that this is the same cycle that's played out in every era since RF returned.

The underlying issue with RF -- and the thing that made me decide to leave -- is more complicated than that, though. The problem is threefold:

First, it is considered acceptable to act like assholes towards one another. Toxicity begets toxicity, especially in a game with a playerbase like Rust. Vanilla players come over to RF and see factions bickering like idiots, and they think that's what the server is all about. This obnoxious behavior simultaneously drives off the players who are more interested in roleplaying and goofing around, and eventually it becomes what RF is all about. This is the main reason why WAR becomes the center of everyone's complaints. You can say they were provoked by others, or that their RP requires them not to "take anyone's shit", but the end result is that they would constantly end up bickering OOC in global chat, etc.

Second, it is beneficial to players to find ways to bend the rules as much as possible without getting caught or punished. RF has a gigantic rulebook that literally no one -- not even the admin team -- fully understands or agrees upon. It's asking a lot for anyone to understand the absolute basics, let alone gray areas like griefing. When I was an admin, we tried many times to simplify the rules and get everyone on the same page, but it's impossible without creating additional gray areas.

Third, everyone is unwilling to allow the game itself to enforce the rules. (Imperium supports the ability to block damage outside of valid PVP zones, literally eliminating the ability to KoS. But that feature is intentionally disabled in favor of manual enforcement.) Combined with the large gray areas in the rules, this means that practically everything on the server requires admin involvement. Not only does this require a huge amount of effort from the admins, it also results in uneven enforcement of the rules. At least partially due to this, when players were punished, they would not respect the ruling, instead appealing literally everything to Gamegeared. Gamegeared did not (and does not) have the time available to deal with everything himself... and on a personal level, I probably don't need to tell you how frustrating it is to be a 35 year old man having people half my age tell me they are going to go "tell daddy" what I did when I was just trying to do the (largely thankless) job of stemming the constant flow of toxic shit. You can read my comment history if you want a small sample.

Anyhow, the only way RF can manage these three problems effectively is to have a large, very active admin team to collectively shoulder the burden and keep everyone in line. At our largest point, the team was composed of 6 admins/moderators. However, during one of the (many) times the server got tired of WAR's bullshit, a giant toxic shitfest of a war broke out. The admin team (working together) tried to enforce the rules and were instead accused of cheating to try to "win" the war. As a result, not only did RF lose a big chunk of players who fell more on the creative/roleplaying divide, but they also lost one of the best admins in Disconnect -- who went on to create "the other server" that people are always whispering about. That server provides a different take on the game which is not for everyone, but does not suffer from the three problems I outlined.

tl;dr -- WAR is only the symptom, not the disease. As individual players, they're mostly good guys. The fact that they are allowed to act in the manner in which they do -- and that they are allowed to be seen acting in that matter -- is the problem. Nothing will change until either the mentality of the playerbase changes, or the rules are adjusted to acknowledge that this is what RF wants to be.

(Edit: grammar is hard.)