You are still complaining about this effective system and blaming it because you are not ranking up, 10 merit is not that hard to get how much more complain will come from you if you're on your way to "full member"?
If you will just learn to embrace the system you will surely rank up more than you expected.
Im telling you that I also start without having any free merit after the system implementation I also once complain about it but after all I realized that this system make's this forum more organized and challenging and I learned to love it. Just accept the fact that merit system will never be gone and only the strongest and loyal member's will stay.