It doesn't matter if that would be the extreme edge case. It's a case that CG needs to consider when making a change like this. They need to do better about not invalidating player progress. Full stop.
44,000 chieftains could, theoretically, be concentrated in the top 900 guilds (and realistically, they're more likely to be found up here), which would be guilds over 430m gp.
ROTE is accessible to guilds at 200m gp. If we ignore guilds in the 200m-300m range (for which they'd likely have problems completing proving grounds operation characters, which is also a problem), and only look at guilds between 300m and 430m, that's 2,150 guilds. Significantly more than the number of top guilds where those chieftains are more likely to be concentrated.