Nope! I know, everyone asked for more incentives/new things for factions, so lets do away with everything that is already been in place for a very long time and attempt to replace it with something that's adding new coded instances into old areas that already have their own code. (Great use of the few developers)
If they were trying to bump up pvp, they should of just of added things to the arena like letting you set skills and pick pre made suits that only last the duration of the fight, That would of allowed new players to actually participate in pvp to some extent that doesn't involve yew gate fighting on test center, but the arena system wasn't very well built either.
If their goal was attracting new players, that was the wrong way to do it. Power Hour, increasing the skill gain buff in New Haven to 90(Adding new quest lines with new items for training at 70 and 90 skill (Maybe full spell books!?!?! No way) Actual Tutorials for basic things in the game. Npc's that can repair gear in exchange for gold right in new haven up to 75% durability and losing 1 point for using it (For those dead servers where you can't find players), and the list goes on and on and on.
Honestly, if they are going to try and hijack ideas from newer games like Rift/Final Fantasy, they may as well take the good ones that are easier to code.