This is not a rant about why merit sucks; imo it's a good and interesting system, but the amount of bias that comes into play is insane. For example, when I joined the forum, the merit system was already implemented. It is already evident to me that it is very hard to get merit, much less get to 100 or 1000. But, had I stayed on the forum only 4-5 days before merit was implemented, and had I posted around a bit, when the merit system rolled in I would have automatically gotten 100 merit points - something that now takes weeks, if not months of quality posting.

For Members and above, it's really no biggie, since they get free merit. But for newbies like myself, getting to the next rank is exponentially higher because you really have to grind. Grinding isn't bad... but imo it's really unfair. Just a mini-rant.