I strongly disagree with you. It's not hard to rank up here, and it's not true that members are greedy with their merits. Take me for example - I joined the forum two years ago and was recently promoted to Hero member rank. You've been here for four years, but in that time you haven't moved beyond Newbie member rank. Can you spot the difference between us in terms of our forum activity?
I think you are right, but I disagree if you think all users will have the same experience on this forum. Especially rankings after the merit system was introduced, it could only be achieved by users who were willing and able to post something quality. However when users were unwilling and unable to do so, then they would have hard time rank up. So that should be the reason why one thought about the difficulty of rank up nowadays.
This obviously shows that the senior forum members care about young members and recognize those who are most helpful in the forums. I'm sure that if you join the discussions and become active, you will be recognized and promoted fairly soon.
Quality posters will be rewarded, they won't have much trouble getting merit and rankings. But I can say that every user should try to do the best they can and let other users judge the quality of their posts. I also agree that engaging in good discussion increases the chances of gaining knowledge and merit, and that is something that is often the habit of quality posters as far as I know.