Theharvester
its ironic but if such a third neutral way was to be implemented it would easily become imo the largest faction population, many gamers care very little in reality for religion in real life.
not so much because of the religious implications but because within Ryzom the community has just evolved that way.
In most mmos faction conflict is so severe (usually by design, sometimes by accident) that some publishers had to disable options to communicate between factions because it was just a constant flood of harassment and abuse, in Ryzom people (outside of pvp scenarios like opwars) work together despite being in opposing factions.
e.g. in wow there used to be such an option but Blizzard had to remove it. In Shaiya they went so far as to make it impossible to create toons in more than one faction per server and account (so if you want to try the other faction from your initial choice, you must use either another server and/or another account, there factions never see each other at all except in pvp content as they don't even share maps).
I think the largely cooperative environment that Ryzom creates draws in people who're overall more mature and "gentle", more likely to behave in civilised manner and less interested in conflict.
A neutral stance goes well with that, and within the Ryzom lore and gameplay mechanics there is ample room for it (again, unlike most other mmos out there, many of which, like Shaiya, are designed to have complete seperation of the factions outside of pvp, and sometimes complete separation of any players outside of towns and cities, as is the case with guild wars).