bilbous: You do have to realise however, that by choosing the path of a freelancer, you must accept certain state of affairs that you may, or may not consider benefitial to you, personally.
Guilds provide advantages to those who join them. No doubt, this should be a well known fact. Now what has to be underlined is that asides creating a close-knit community, bound to follow same pre-determined aims, guilds also make it possible for their new members to progress with a speed proportional to the power of the given organisation. This is just something you have to accept when deciding to remain unaligned. It is also something that should be accepted by the community in general. Some guilds will have a better organisation, some will have it worse. Likewise, some might grant advantages greatly surpassing those offered by other organisations. It's just something that should be accepted, rather than scorned. The latter more often than not will be simply a sign of jealousy.
Now let me ask you something. In the most extreme case, would you really expect the Explorers guild to hide the vital information, which could otherwise help their members to explore new areas, thus far hidden from them by a chain of required quests? In my personal opinion that wouldn't really suit a highly esteemed role-playing guild. They can, of course, hide the information and expect their members to find it by themselves, thus proving to be worthy of promotion, but I don't think this stands as the only solution they should be allowed to partake.
You can consider this to be an unfair advantage, but looking at the entire matter from historical point of view, what else could be thought about the craftsmen guilds, which monopolised the market? In time, as more Planeshift features will be brought into the sunlight, guilds will be given more possibilities to outdo others. Economical and military power will be the center of interest for many organisations and it isn't very likely that an unaligned crafsman will constitute a good deal of competition for the members of the well-established guilds.
You have to ask yourself if you are ready for this. If you find the advantages provided by the guilds disturbing even now, you might want to reconsider putting your individuality above benefits of guild membership. With time it will become even harder to put up with the growing forces, whilst pleas taken to the forums most likely will remain unanswered.
The opportunities are meant to be equal and I believe they are. The problem is opportunity alone isn't enough to bestow you with a complete success. You are bound to make moves, which will help you to progress. There's no point in getting angry at people, who simply take advantage of this opportunity in different way than you do.
