I sometimes fear people are just talking past each other here because they are starting from totally different places. I believe much of that is based on the assumption that "best guilds" mean "highest ranked". Perhaps that is true for some players, especially fighters, but not everyone is a fighter. To me, absolute hell would be to be in a guild where I was expected to log in every 4 hours, fight several hundred battles every day in GBG, and turn my city into something that is devoted to producing Attack bonuses. *Shudders* That does not mean that I don't want to be able to complete 10 or 20 encounters (battles and negotiations) in GBG most days, or that I want to be locked out of it. Sadly, it also means that all to often I do end up in Diamond league, and get locked out of the GBG map as two "high ranking" (shudder quotes) guilds farm the map to the exclusion of everyone else.
Bottom line is that "best guild" means different things to different players, and depends on the players style, the amount of time they have for the game, and what they enjoy. My experience is that most players have no desire to be in one of the "best guilds" as defined by many people in this thread. That doesn't mean they want to be totally locked out of part of it, and I honestly believe that what Inno should be doing (and is trying to do here) is make the game enjoyable for the largest number of players. You may disagree with the way Inno is trying to do that, but if everyone would stop it with the implicit and unfounded assumptions as to what a "good guild" is and think about how do we make the game fun and exciting for everyone, we would not need 158 (and counting) pages of discussion that is 90% repetition based on different starting places.
*off soap box and back into lurker mode*