So among all the other changes 1.5 is bringing, Guild Battle is going to be restricted to the top 8 guilds per server, and Battles will be held M/W/F instead of M/W/F/S. (Someone on the kong forum seemed to think that rewards would be increased, but I guess we'll have to wait and see about that.)
But what this means is that guild battle spots are going to become a lot more precious, and we'll likely see a lot of those guilds on the bubble or below the cut-off looking to merge, or have their higher ranked players jump ship, at least. While that doesn't effect us directly, I wonder if we shouldn't consider reaching out to some of those lower-ranked guilds to raise the idea of mergers. Best case scenario, we jump Divinity and take that #2 spot; but even if that doesn't happen, we at least make sure we keep pace with the other guilds who'll surely be looking to do the same.
And assuming we are going to see guilds merging, I wonder if it's not time we make some firm recruitment cut-offs -- for my part, I have no idea why we accept anyone under level 35 (or maybe even 40) at least at this point anyway. If nothing else, getting to that point means that the person is less likely to up and quit. Anyway, a merger or two might also entail making the merged guild into a feeder guild, as we'd thought of doing with Oblivion: taking their higher-ranked players, shunting our lower-ranked players into the other guild, and using it as a feeder for the players there who do advance.
Thoughts?