I wouldn't take it personally. Running a guild is a lot of work (even smaller ones can keep one quite busy) and they may not have gotten to reviewing their applications yet, or those with permission may not have been able to log in, or sometimes the applications/notifications don't even show up for a few days. You'll just have to be patient, or try applying for multiple at a time?
I agree the Guild Finder tool makes it difficult to find Guilds. It reminds me of coding from the early 1990’s. The filters don’t work well and are missing key sort options. Some of my same complaints about the ESO Trading system.
As for application delays, there may be impacts from how the tool functions (or doesn’t) but I suspect it comes down to how much of a priority the Guild Leader(s) put into (are able to put into) processing requests. I’ve had a couple (400+ member) guilds that accepted my application in less than 24 hours. The first Guild I applied to almost a year ago has yet to respond to either my request to their Forum recruitment thread, or my application (which I assume has been deleted or still sitting in a pending invite state).
Some Guilds may not wish to grow in size. There is a lot of effort required to manage large Guilds, especially if they are primarily Trading Guilds. I do not envy their task at all. In fact, I applaud their efforts to keep a Guild functioning.
My advice: If a Guild is inordinately slow to respond/take action then move on. This may well be a harbinger of how the Guild operates. Thankfully, I’ve been lucky and have had good experiences with the Guilds I’ve joined. It’s been clear to me that the Leadership Teams care about their members and are keen on maintaining a pleasant and active experience for their members.
Invitation pending . That is what it says when you apply to a guild you like and it takes forever to get accepted. I thought i was being ignored so i just cancelled my application.
The thing is, there are a lot of little guilds that look very appealing to me simply because they are not huge and some do the activities i enjoy but they never ever recruit in zone chat 😭😭😭😭. So then i have to try find them on guild finder but it's a pain 😭😭😭. I am amazed at how many medium to small guilds there are that never grow their members.