It's a way to encourage participation inside your GC. Don't see what's the big deal. And as others have said, seals will be easier to get in the next patch.

I'm ok with the direction they took. Given said that, I'm a little bit surprised about the amount - for some reason I wasn't expecting to see 1k or 1.5k seals needed to rank up; I was thinking an amount near 500 or so.