This is still happening. For example killing level 15-16 bats in Silverspring, one bat will hit me for 21, then bat right next to it will hit me for over 600 @.@. This routinely happens on the Silverspring map and happened on the Howling Mountains map.
Ostriches, wolves, spiders, kobalds...you name it.
At the time of this post I am a level 26 Knight in 16-19 level gear.
I have 109,000 gold at the moment. I click the Guild Formation button through the dialogue with the Guild Establishment Administrator in Varanas and then click to agree to pay 100,000 gold. After I click to "Accept", I always get a pop-up window that "You don't have enough money" I am 25/24 level.
Thank you for the reply 
I used the map follow function to track Meri to where the map showed Meri located in Central Plaza at Varanas; but she was not there (by the water fountain). I switched to every channel available as well, and she was still never there. I reviewed patch notes and did not see where the NPC had been removed.
