Basically, I feel that Turbine stuck their middle finger in the air to small guilds. Renown was a bad idea, period. Large guilds will continue to just get larger, and small guilds will see their members gravitate to larger ones just for the path of least resistance to some of the poorly thought out buffs available.

Stats, Damage, Energy Resistance? No. Scrap them. Pretty much anything that will improve your character in game should be thrown out. Things that help via convenience are fine (group storage, shops in one place, etc.). The other things are very poorly thought out and really don't make any sense, either.