The question we ask shouldn't be: How did it work before?
The questions we ask should be: Does a long wait to get into Scarab make it better right now? Does it make it more fun? Do the positives of making people wait (whatever those are) outweight the negatives?

The past is in the past. Maybe in that environment 10 years ago it was better to make people wait and keep it a relatively elite cabal. But considering there are approximately zero active characters in the cabal today.. why are we still operating in the way that we used to?