Your statement about “faction chat cannot be used”, is irrelevant when Im neither requesting for it’s removal nor when you account the very fact that it is actually usuable.
People do use it for other things besides spamming links, while people do spam links even outside faction chat. Even the lobbys that you talk about are spammed with links.
The toll for obligatory region chat wont be that big, when the regions for the relevant dungeons are always crowded with people that are recruiting. It might be inconvenient that you actively have to go to an area before being able to join a party, but the inconvenience there isn’t anywhere as big as being unable to communicate without getting flooded with spam.
You may say that there isn’t much incentive to chat now, but this lack of incentive isn’t without a reason. No one will bother to talk if they have to scroll through heaps just to find the comment they inded to reply to. But, people who are only interested in joining any random party that is requesting their dungeon of interest, will do so in any channel where it’s available.
There may be other reasons for why this game feels dead, but the spam only makes it worse. Since the players in this case, practically sounds like lifeless bots, leaving out whatever little life an active chat would have.
The faction chat may have not been intended to be the social global chat, but it wasn’t intended to just be a dump of links either. It’s just is whatever it’s used for, but from what I can see, social players are more of a need for a global chat than the dungeon only ones, precisely cause the latter will usually be in regions of their dungeons, while social players may not necessarily want to be joining the party of the people they chat with.
I do think a truly global chat without faction restrictions would be ideal, but if we are forced to only work with what the game already has, it’s not only easier to change the flow of recruitment, but it also will be the one the will be held back the least by such a change.