Vanilla was all about fucking the other faction up. Outplay them, outgear them, outnumber them, outlevel and outcorpserun them. Whenever it happened during leveling, farming, in front of instances or in BGs, your entire point was to fuck shit up enough so people can tear eachother and create dramas on forums, IRC, voicecoms, etc. Preventing people from farming Tyr's Hand or Felwood was the ultimate goal.
When you eventually managed to get the drip on any concurrent guild progress wise, it was most of the time about instance entrance denies, or impending them from gathering mats / consumables. Warfare wise, you'd cut your enemy's supply lines. You wore his morale down. You fucked him enough his guild would eventually collapse, disband or just get the spectator bench, waiting for the war the end before entering the dungeon.
On a PvE server you surely can have world PvP as brutal and sudden as a Barry Lindon duel, and somewhat establish a mats "first-click-first-serve" monopoly. You just couldn't fuck shit up. It's okay, nowadays vanilla people like most of us can't concentrate on the most important stuff because we have to deal with real life filler quests as getting maried, having a career and produce offspring. But back in the day it was all about spending enough time to make the other faction lose its.