I never played DAoC yet all the info we have points to PVP being important to the devs and the devs knowing what they are doing in this regard.
Traditionally ES games let you explore anywhere in the game world. Many potential players have voiced concerns about not seeing all there is to see without rolling an alt.
I'm having difficulty reconciling the devs aims of faction pride/loyalty and the players desires to see all there is.

Exactly. In PvP for example you want to have the feeling that you hate the other factions and that's what makes you care about winning. By forcing you to play other factions just to see the rest of the world you never get that sense of pride and loyalty for belonging to one faction.

Welcome to the forums you two!

I use to play DAoC and there just isn't a good way to show the feeling of alliance pride unless you've played the game. It is like having pride in one single race in TES. As far as not being able to see all of the land without making alts a good thing because this is not a single player game. And an mmorpg if your paying monthly you want as much entertainment as possible. So this gives the game more replay value since you will have to roll new alts to see everything and I feel that is a good way to hold off on making new content when the game is first released and to pay more attention to any bugs that may not have been noticed in the beta stages.

Let the rest of the world burn! I will stick with Dunmers..

Rolling multiple characters seems fine to me. Then I can play all three stories

I plan to have an alt in each faction. I have no problem doing so.

I have no problem and am actually really excited about playing different characters throughout the course of my experience with the game. It's also important to remember that the faction locks are not just purely for PvP purposes or just to "inspire faction loyalty" there's a lot more too them than that.