From what I've seen, every discussion of faction differentiation is basically a show-and-tell of what people imagine different factions to be. Having actually written a book about the world of Elemental, frogboy must have thought pretty much everything through. The trouble is, few posters have actually read this book (I have not), and The kind of detailed lore that would inform us beta testers is not really forthcoming. Which is why that good/evil lawful/chaotic chart threw everybody for a loop in at least one way, and why you run into forum conversations along the lines of "Really? I thought Gilden were merchants who would sell their grandmothers into slavery" or "Isn't Verga just trying to get by like everyone else? Give him a break." etc. (okay, maybe not that drastic, but still).
So my meta-suggestion is to just post some more details about the history of the races/factions, so that the suggestions you get from your avid beta testers are somewhat more in line with your vision of the game. And by you I mean frogboy.
As an aside, I am jonesing for another beta update. Got any ideas when that will be?
EDIT: Xia informs me that the book is really neither here nor there. Doesn't change the fact that the posters lack information, though. And I still *strongly* suspect that Frogboy has a big ol' stack of notes somewhere.