I think as a collective we should focus on giving sound advice when newbies start, and think guild recruitment shouldnt be until at least lvl 20 imo.
You can get to level 15-18 in a day or two and, at this point, few understand hardly anything about the game. I genuinely believe recruitment at this stage can be very counter productive and overly confusing, when they are trying to understand the guild mechanic/system as well as the games.
Advice and help, and even some small amounts of resource are the main reasons they join at that stage, and tbh i think its not that hard for us to give them that without a guild.
Spamming invites is bad 100%. I know cos i do my best to be annoying, and ive been here a year and a half, and even i had to make a guild just for me to stop the spamming!
The amount of newbies that join guilds with no idea what a guild is, what it offers and then proceed to beg for help and basic advice is kinda embarrassing.
Im not interested in recruitment at all tbh but this is exactly the reason would only ever add a handful of people to my guild, no matter what.
As the game gets older, and numbers continue dropping, i think there is a conflict between guilds/players that give players space and time to get settled and then look for a guild, and those that start and want free stuff to build faster and accept the first invites they get with no understanding of the implications.
Unfort the only effective way to recruit right now is as soon as they appear, as you know others will be doing the same.
I think raising the level cap to join would help prevent this