Exactly, already seeing full members randomly giving 1 merits, a bit surprised i haven't seen someone offer rep up service in 'Marketplace' yet. lol.
I see great opportunities for "writing services": selling good quality unique articles, so a spammer can have one decent post and likely earn some Merit.
(and this is why I often check a user's post history before meriting him)Wonder what will be the long term effect. I struggle to believe that signature campaign abusers with thousands of accounts, will be stopped by the new ranking requirements. Possibly a minor inconvenience for them, as they are likely to find a way, whether it's buying/trading merit or hacking accounts.
I have no doubt there will be some cheaters who slip trough, probably a few thousand (just like there are many more users with exactly 10 Merit than 8, 9, 11 or 12 Merit).
The Merit system isn't airtight, but it reduces the problem from "unlimited" to "a few thousand".