Okay my friends, did not expect that my opening statement would cause such a big discussion, but I'm happy it did, also thank you all for your statements, but please try to keep them friendly and constructive. @PINT00 I think you misconceive what it means to be an Artist, and I think it doesn't hurt to spell it out for once: We have these 27000 x 30000 block big map, a savefile which technically is not worth a penny but ideologically is priceless. The most valuable thing people have in todays societies is TIME, we cannot make it more, we can only decide how to spend it. And now think of how many hours have been spent to create this Middle-earth map. As Adventurer you cannot touch the map unless under strict supervision. As Artist you can. You get the privilege to work on something of immeasurable worth. But with that privilege of course comes, yeah, responsibility. As Artist (and beyond) you silently agree to be to some extent responsible for the well-being of the map and that is a (so far) unwritten requirement you have to fulfill to get Artist. Everyone that I promote to Artist I have experienced ingame. I have experienced that they honour the work they may be able to contribute to, I have seen their passion and that's what makes a person do great things. On the paper activity and building skills are required, but in fact there is more to it.
Oh and by the way: the reason why it took me so long to be promoted was because over a few months the apps were only checked very sporadically if at all.

@BurgundyStig your C. point grinds my gears, which I think are not rusty yet. The one about the slowing down progress and the one about it all growing into a joyless scripted procedure that does not really lead anywhere.
I think you are right on both points. I would contradict your point of lacking innovation, we do have more innovative additions than we ever had in the form of new plugins that are being developped in amazing speed currenty. But we lack social innovation. After the big cities of Gondor were done, which understandably are both for staff and others way more fun and challenging to make we accidentally moved towards a situation where every staff member leads its own project, there's no interaction between staff members about projects, the staff project forum feels like the typical scene of a tumbleweed being blown through the desert. And this lack of interaction projects on the Artists and also on the Guides; I feel like they adopted the mindset of asking oneself "what do I need to do on here?" instead of "what do we need to on here?". Of course this is no critique to anyone, it just happened to be like this. (And it is my job to try initiating changing it back). On the other hand, Gondor with locations like Osgiliath (which was kinda built twice and is the biggest city ever), Minas Tirith, Pelargir, Dol Amroth and Linhir simply is a bigger bite to take than Rohan with Edoras and Aldburg that can almost not come up to the size of the medium cities of Gondor. Also if you compare the terrains of Rohan and Gondor on dynmap it is by no means astonishing that the latter took way longer.
The point that with the current age of people our rank system is not appropriate anymore is also very intriguing. However there I think it's a matter of conception and not of the system as-is. The ranks depict proven skills and matching responsibilites. Everyone has been a droog once, including me, and I would not say I am fundamentally better than as droog, I just have proven and exercised certain skills I already had in some form. This leads to something EVERYONE on here needs to realise: An Artist is not better than an Adventurer, and the Head Designer is not better than an Adventurer either. Since I've gotten Commoner I looked at people with lower ranks from the same height, but always I looked up to those who had a higher rank. If I ask an Artist to do something and he does not feel like doing it, I accept that. There's often things I'm supposed to do but don't feel like doing right then. Go now and reread the quote I posted as closing statement. Adventurers are technically inferiors to Artists and other ranks, because an Artist has access to more commands and similar things on our server, and an Artist is practically more valuable than an Adventurer because he has already proven that he has skills that can be of great use for our project. Go with this mindset: An Adventurer is like a sheet of which you only see the empty back side. You have no idea whats on that sheet, but it may well be that there's something really awesome on it. Thus instead of stepping onto the sheet, grab it and turn it around and reveal it's secrets. Try to make a new Adventurer be your new friend and not your new enemy.
The joyless thing: As we see from the motivation series, theres different things that make everyone of us thrive and find joy in MCME. Many like to build gigantic cities, something one could barely do alone, unfortunately we have already used up all of them, at least in Gondor. I promise everyone: A time will come, hopefully quite soon, where we no longer won't have to only read in the Times about where we have reworked rivers and where a new desert was created. Also I promise to open PVP a bit more often

Again: Thanks for initiating the discussion, please contribute your two cents, but keep it friendly and constructive!