Yes. Lusternia is (by design) really, really hard on rogues. You're basically not allowed to enjoy the game to its full extent without being a member of a guild, and the guilds only let you exist as a member if you're also a member of the city, and the cities only let you exist as a member if you're hostile towards the other cities... Basically, when it comes to PvP, the game is designed to tell you 'Bugger off unless you want to have 50% of the game after your arse'. This tends to brush away two kinds of people: People who view PvP as a RP instrument, and people who like being independent. It attracts two kinds of people: People who view PvP as a grief instrument (Because organizations aren't strong enough, or willing enough, to stop unsporting behaviour like killing much weaker players on the highways or stealing from innocent people) and people who view PvP as a metagame (Who are, mostly, alright.).

yeah I think that it really stinks that people who taking the Tracking skill can't get their own pets and be independent of city. It's bad enough that the only potential to be a rogue is to be a warrior and not some crazy hermit druid (if all that even makes sense)

The land here is covered with the fashion statements of Verithrax, their clashing colors seeping throughout the landscape.

Psh. Have you actually ever seen Verithrax? He dresses in all black, gold and silver.

Lusternia is a blending of a combat game and a roleplaying game. Both have quite different objectives and attract different types of people. Unfortunately quite often these conflict.

Most of all though, Lusternia is a multi-player game, and the entire city / guild structure is a mechanism to force people to interact. Rogues are discouraged because the IRE designers believe that if viable, too many people would go rogue, and dilute the player interaction that is vital to keep the game sustainable.

One might say that they do not trust the maturity of the player base to form political and social alliances without a strong in-game mechanism to force it.

From my observations, I wouldn't be inclined to disagree with them.

I should probably add, that I think Lusternia manages to combine combat and roleplay remarkably well. From a roleplay perspective I dislike the combat system. However, I suspect that Lusternia is a much more interesting roleplay environment because of it.