Guild balance and stuff

[Rhaegar]

I was thinking some more on the entire global guild balancing thing and it occured to me that it's practically all about OCC guilds. I know that these guilds are the major concern but I think that racial, layman and craft guilds suffer just as much discrepancies. The problem with craft guilds is that they offer skills that diminish the value of other guilds. Why do smiths offer so high trading skill still? They don't need it for crafting. Why do Gardeners offer high awareness skill? These are just some of the questions.

I've made a brief summary of some of the elven racial guilds, to better illustrate certain trends and differences (did elves because I have the most recent experience with them). Here are some guild features to consider:

Palanthas racial
- no restrictions
- no skills
- few emotes
- infravision

Wild Elves
- 2 skills at superior journeyman
- no align restrictions
- ability to summon messenger that fails to deliver its message 90% of the time

Eil-Galaith
- 6 skills at superior journeyman
- humans and elves can join
- goodie only
- ability to summon messenger that never fails to deliver message

Noldor
- 8 skills at superior journeyman
- goodie only
- free steed that you can summon and send back at will from wherever in the realms

Drow
???

Some questions:

How and when did racial guilds go from 2 higher skills to 8? Seems like a pretty profound change.
Why the discrepancies in messengers? Fairy dragons are used often and work great while Wild Elf, Valar and Ranger messengers are never used because they suck so much (why would the guilds be paying tax for abilities that don't work?).
Does the change of Gardeners and Smiths to craft from layman and seriously upping the skillset of some of the recently added racial guilds play into diminishing the value of other racial and layman guilds? Valar seem extremely underskilled right now, Noldor get more skills, Gardeners get higher herbalism, racial guilds that offered awareness and/or trading aren't as desirable any more now that you can get those skills from craft slots etc.

What are your feelings on those?