For the beast tribe stuff, I’ve been thinking that when someone has obtained the max ranks within the tribes in ARR – there’s no more quests available from that tribe. You can still buy things from them, but you won’t be able to take on more tribe quests from them. This would effectively lock that tribe but in return it would open up one of the HW tribes.

I’m sure that it’s possible to add a hunter class into the current lore. Maybe a branch off from BOT/ALC connections? That way “Hunters” would be the “quiet” child in the crafter/gathering family so to speak.