Though, I do wish staff would let us contribute to the guild changes upcoming: paper and reality are usually vastly different.
What I think many game communities have, that Armageddon does not, is a 'testing community'. A group of players who the Staff trust to try out big changes, and give them real time feedback. While Staff are too players, so they have valuable insight from both sides of the pond, expanding that pond to a larger group (Say 10 people), trying out changes on the test port, and tweaking from there would probably help bridge the gap between paper and reality.
I don't think Staff have missed their mark often (Though one might mention Armageddon Reborn, despite it being my wish that still happened). The subguild changes have mostly been great, but the Magick subguilds leave much to be desired in most instances. It's a well-intentioned change that I think could have benefitted from some real-time playtesting, by the playerbase.
I've seen Staff much more willing to adjust on the fly now, more than ever before -- A good recent example would be the Banking changes. They were rolled out in one version, there was a discussion with the playerbase, and adjustments were made that presented a compromise. I think with large changes, like foundational changes such as sub-guilds and guilds, opinions will vary wildly, and actual playthrough knowledge will be scarce. The difference between a Warrior being OP compared to an Assassin, or the other way around, will be a very narrow margin. While this isn't a game about balance (It isn't a MMORPG with party gathering and question marks over people's heads), there needs to be a trade off of strengths and weaknesses that I imagine will be very difficult to get into the sweet spot.
I mean to be perfectly honest, the guild changes can either really turn people on, or really turn people off. So as the people who are going to play those choices, I think we have a good case in being involved with how they turn out. Elsewise, you might find people are so utterly turned off that they start playing another game (!!!). Changing foundation stones can really polarize people. ArmageddonMUD has mostly avoided this by not making these sorts of drastic changes for most of its existence -- But to change almost all of the core foundational 'classes/guilds/subguilds' within a year or two is radical to say the least. Exciting on one hand, and sort of intimidating and inducing skepticism on the other.
For all I know, though, Staff already has play-testers and hasn't said anything about it, and the play-testers haven't said anything about it because of a NDA (heh). So, could be a moot point.