Okay, so i heard a lot of your suggestions and I just kind of went with it. I went through the list of mods Silent posted, as well as some mentioned by others. A lot of them don't really work well unfortunately, but i did pull the good ones, as well as looking at generally popular mods for our game mode.
Long story short I am:
-Scrapping Creative until we move it to a different server
-We have a custom 2k x 2k Island map with custom biomes, hidden areas, and a custom nether.
-We have McMMO for some RP and grinding (comes with cool powers, look it up), as well as dragon flying to get from island to island (you literally ride an ender dragon through the world)
-We are going to limit factions to 5 THEMED factions, with leaders to be discussed by silentguns.
-May add more later, i.e. economy or something small, but overall this makes for a lot of stuff running on the server.
I don't have time to put it up before work, so silent is going to do some finishing touches, as well as talk to you about the faction leaders. I plan to put the server up around 9-930 EST tonight, with a 24-48 hour no PVP blanket to allow factions to set up.