As indicated by this post we've updated our Initiate process. It's now a two tier system.
Although as long as your recruitment posts looks good you're pretty much guaranteed to get to phase two, phase two applicants will be judged on their RP ability more accurately via a message dump.
And in light of recent system changes, as well as some complaints regarding the interaction-phobia some armourless Initiates had when confronted with hostile players, we've made it so that the process can be done with armour now.
Generally the process shouldn't be seen as more daunting and we fully invite people to apply