Why Guild Ranks Kills New Guilds

After a frustrating few weeks of trying to start a guild from scratch I want to /slit my wrists. I never have struggled to get a guild going as much as I did with this. I did decide about a week ago to basically disband it from lack of anyone logging in more than an hour a week. The guild just consists of my characters now.

In all my previous guilds it was super easy to get guilds started. In just a few weeks you would have a solid core of players, and still growing every day. Recruiting was easy.

Times have changed, and now it is nearly impossible for any new guilds to form.

One of the main reasons is the free trial. It is almost impossible to weed out who is playing for free, and who is really going to subscribe to the game. You can recruit all day, and night. If you are lucky 1 out of 25 will stick around.

Another reason is the Forces of Order and Destruction guilds that players are automatically joined. It is hard to convince any player to join a new small guild when those guilds field the largest numbers. Of course there is no real organization, or ventrilo. It is just a bunch of players following each other around doing there own thing.

I think the biggest reason new guilds are impossible to get off the ground now is because of guild ranks. It sounds like a cool idea on paper, but eventually no one wants to start from scratch.

Everyone wants to join a high ranking guild. Of course most of the guild rank rewards are pure garbage, but a few will keep players in a guild even if they are unhappy.

No one wants to be in a guild that doesn't have a guild vault, standards, ability to claim keeps, faster mounts, joining an alliance and etc.

I really think guild ranks should be removed from the game. Every guild should be able to offer the same things, and not be judged on their guild rank which means nothing more than a bunch of players spending time in the game to achieve it.

Do you think guild ranks should be removed? How about the starter guilds Forces of Order, and Destruction?