I'm pretty sure no guild has gotten 1k without using subs and/or noobcruiting for a good part of their journey to 1k. Subguilds are allies to a guild which are basically a backup tag for members so the main guild can easily kick offline members for space. Noobcruiting means recruiting random people (usually when your guild doesn't have many members online) and kicking them for no apparent reason when they log off without giving them a sub. The thing these tactics have in common is that they abuse the guild and ally system to bypass the 25 player limit. This promotes quanity over quality in tower guilds to be able to compete...for a hat that only 25 members are supposed to receive.

You probably knew all that, so I'm gonna move on. Is it possible for a guild to get 1k without doing all that? I'm not saying you can just throw 25 noobs together and call it a success. If a group of people have very clever and well thought-out strategies and genuinely had fun taking towers, maybe they can get by just fine without abusing the guild system. Or is it so dominant and powerful nowadays that there's no escape, as in you must do it or your guild is doomed to fail?