I am not sure if this is fair to the younger members since the older members received higher forum ranks much easier.
It's fair. Even if it weren't fair, it was the fairest solution to the rampant shitposting problem. By the beginning of 2018 it was clear to anyone reading posts on this forum that something had to be done--account farming was easy to do and was out of control. Members came here hoping to rank up and earn big money in signature campaigns, and the result was an onslaught of low-quality posts done for just that purpose.
It is especially difficult to advance for young members who can't write in English and can only participate in the local part of the forum.
If they feel the need to write in a language they don't have a command of, I would question their motive for doing so. Usually such members have advertising in their signatures, and if that's the case they're probably writing in English because that's what they're getting paid to do.
It's much, much harder to rank up from scratch these days, that is certainly true. But that's the whole point of the merit system. It wasn't done maliciously but rather as a protective mechanism for the forum as a whole. Personally I think it's serving its purpose so far, all complaints aside (and we haven't seen many bitch-fests in Meta lately).