I find a few things at fault with this guys views, not only about Brohoof but the comparisons that he is trying to draw to WoW.
[rant]
1. I wouldn't really call the introduction process a way to, "rule out any undesirables who are unwilling to follow strict guidelines and rules." I wouldn't even go so far to call the submissions process that. I try to make it very clear to everyone who asks about the submissions process that it isn't about being an amazing builder, but instead it is about being able to build to a theme and having more than adequate building and design skills.
2. Now I have a VERY big problem with what he says about builder rank.
After passing, you are promoted to builder. Now you have to prove to what extent your abilities of a builder are. This involves numerous town structures, kissing ass to the admins, and making sure you ask the permission of the admins for anything you do while on the server.
This is someone who clearly didn't even bother to read ANY of the city/town threads. Easily 60-70% of the plots if not more in Equestria are as simple as posting that you are taking the plot then there is no other interaction with an admin or the forums at all. I personally try to push home the fact that the N. Ponyville plots, which is what a good bulk of the plots claimed on the server are, do not require permission but just require you to acknowledge the fact that you are taking that area.
3. I personally take insult to the next part.
If you can manage the above for a few months, they add you to the brohoof Elite builders group (the ones that build the key landmarks from the actual show) and if you continue to follow their strict guidelines and rules, then you are a fully brain-washed brony, worthy of manipulation from Ratty and his cohorts.
I've been on this server a little less than a month and I personally have two canon buildings in Ponyville, a mansion in Bucklynn, and my mall, all of which are either showcase buildings or are in showcase areas. When the bowling alley was under construction, I was still very much a new member of the community and all I had to do was ask if I could take a stab at building the exterior. While that was going on, there was a team in freebuild of both experienced members and newer members alike working together to build the interior. And with this "Elite builders group" he mentions, where the hell did he get that? He might be referencing the WBT, but clearly he doesn't read the forums, as stated earlier, because there is the topic being brought up in the WBT thread that we haven't built anything as a group recently. Hell he might even be referencing trusted builder, but even then that isn't common knowledge and I personally didn't even know about the trusted builder rank until I got it. Or maybe he is referencing the title of the builder sections of the forums since it is called Elite Builders.
4. And finally on his initial post.
I speak with exaggeration, but the attitude remains the same. At no point did I feel I was welcomed, (my intro post had no replies) the admins never acknowledged my stay or even about who I was. They just do not care. They show no respect to new members, they demand respect from you, and they have this mentality that you are 'privilaged' to even be able to play on their server.
I can see where he would say something about his introduction thread, but if he even bothered to look at the subforum that he posted in he would see the sheer VOLUME of introduction threads that were posted just after the yogscast episode and how unrealistic it is to expect someone to respond to every single one of those threads. From the later half of that statement, it leads me to believe that this is the kind of person that was begging chat to get CMC rank while the admins were busy then once his submission was finished he spammed chat for an admin to come check it. Again it is his unrealistic expectations that lead him to believe that our relatively small admin base can personally cater to EVERY SINGLE new member we got. I know for a fact that a good bulk of the builders were and still are trying their best to help supplement the work of the admins by not only welcoming new members when the log in, but also answering the more common questions and giving advice and helpful tips to the CMCs building their submissions.
5. Now I have a few problems with the parallels he draws to WoW. Clearly this is someone who hasn't played WoW in a VERY long time. End game raiding is almost completely a joke at this point until you get into the hard modes, and even those are pretty lulzy. On any server with an sort of healthy population will have PuG (pickup group) raids running every night on top of the new Looking for Raid difficulty they added with the last patch that makes raiding completely trivial. And I hate to break it to him but it isn't just hardcore raiding guilds that require an application. 85%+ of guilds that do any sort of endgame, PvP or PvE, will require a person to apply to their guild. And really I've NEVER seen "scammers" who "steal gear" in any raids and anyone who did that sort of thing would get blacklisted from pretty much any raider's raid or application process to a guild on top of the fact that they would most likely get banned by the GMs and have the gear awarded to the person who should have received it.
[/rant]
Now there are a few things that could help someone else not come to the same conclusion as this person, no matter how flawed his views might be. Just a couple of suggestions that I personally can think of
1. Add a few more admins. It isn't as important as it was during the Yogscast rush but a few more admins couldn't hurt. As it is now during the week, there are maybe 2 admins on at any given time other than the peak hours for each respective area of the world, US/Europe/Australia/etc. Plus this would lead to more admins to answer questions, because even as good as it is that the builders are answering questions and concerns it looks better coming from a red name.
2. I know this is beating a dead horse, but emphasize reading the forums more. I personally tell everyone who has a question that is answered on the forums where they can find their answer instead of telling them the answer directly. It comes to that old adage, If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day but if you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime.
3. This again goes to the forums thing, but it seems like there is an unnecessary amount of fragmentation among the announcement threads in places like submissions. I understand that some of the the announcements are there for specific issues that keep coming up, but it leads to having to read 3 different threads to get all the rules. Maybe instead of all the stickies split up, there can just be a general ENTER BOARD HERE guidelines thread in each of the major subforums that have all the rules and updates in one place.
TL;DR: This person may bring up some slightly valid points but I disagree with most of them. A very large majority of his complaints either stem from not reading the forums (shocker) or having unrealistic expectations of our smaller admin team. Even then, there is a few things we could change that would go a long way.