This is certainly true, and there is no doubt that GL operations on the God Plane were definitel more organized than Arkat's. However, I have always believed that Arkat did make some permanent changes, too.
First of all, he changed himself and his companions. I see the Uz Ritual of Rebirth as as form of Heroquest. What happens to the quester's soul while his body is in the cocoon? Doesn't it wander in the Land of the God in search for Kyger Litor? And the Troll family that is adopting him isn't in fact giving him support in the Quest?
By the way, was the ritual known before Arkat or is it one of his many inventions?
Second, the old Glorantha book from the boxed set G:GCotHW stated that Arkat left guardians at Hero Plane "crossroads" where standard quests might interfere with one another (maybe at the crossing points between differen Otherworlds). This implies that he did know the paths for potentially dangerous HQ variations, i.e. the ones that can change myth, and that he wanted to block others' attempts to walk through them. Of course the GLs bypassed a lot of these blocks. One thing I wonder is: how many of these paths did Arkat walk himself before deciding to stop experimentation? Or, more precisely, did he simply want to prevent all changes or he had already changed something and just tried to to stop others from making further modifications?
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