I honestly can't really help anyone make the choice of which game to try, it all depends on personal preference. You either get player recruitment and very slow advancement but with some slightly more newbie friendly features, or automatic guild joining, triple speed guild advancement and a smaller player base. There's also nothing stopping anyone from playing both, especially since each game has some unique guilds.
Dark, probably due to laziness, not everything has been updated yet regarding quest info. I think help quest has been updated, and the newbie academy quest has the correct answer regarding sharing quest info, but apparently they haven't updated the newbie FAQ yet. I don't even remember seeing a newbie FAQ, actually.
In an ironically completely newbie unfriendly manner, the place where you can actually see the change made to quest info is by reading post 799 on the announcements board, that is, type aread 799 when you're in the game. Many posts after this one also discuss major new changes to the game, such as the newbie equipment.
As for being recruited to a guild, most of the time the guild help file will tell you who will be able to recruit you. Usually someone has to have been in the guild for a while and acquired some of whatever form of advancement that guild uses as a levelling equivalent. You can then type players (guild name) to see who's on and look for someone who meets those requirements. Then, yes, you send them a tell and ask for recruitment. You may have to wait a few minutes in some cases since people will often be out on runs, but if the guild has active members, you'll be recruited.
At the time of this writing, the truely dead guilds appear to be Cyborg, bard and Bladesinger. Dead doesn't mean there's no way to get into them, just that there are rarely any members of that guild on and it can be very difficult to be recruited. Also, you will usually not have any help getting started in that guild.
Guilds that allow for automatic joining on 3Kingdoms include monks, angels, psicorps, elementals and mages, as well as any of the core guilds (fighter, sorcerer, cleric and android.)
Hope this helps and glad people are taking an interest in the mud. I'm usually on 3Scapes as Jotham these days, though I'll likely be making a new alt soon. You can always tell which of my characters is online by typing finger silvanus and looking for the alt in the list that says online.
If anyone wants to run some experience and get some help through the early guild levels, send me a tell or wake me and let me know. I'm always happy to help and the partying features on both games ensure that there is no risk at all for lower level players.