In a way, I agree totally with the larger guild absorbing a smaller guild. If you are going to be serious about a merger between two guilds, you dont just get all the members of the other guild join the larger. You create a whole new guild with a name made from both guild names or something completely new with no attachment to either guilds.

With one of the guilds I have been associated with, we were approached by another guild to do merged raids with the intention of merging both guilds. But as we were the larger, we took the attitude that if you want to merge, you can join us... and it all fell apart. They ended up making a new guild (Damnation) and then merging with another guild (that had Dawn in their name) and became Dawn of Damnation. Those guys went on to kill the LK in heroic mode on a regular basis while the guild I was in stagnated.

The GL would organise 25man raids, where perhaps 15 members of the raid were pug friends and the remaining 10 members were from the guild. The GL wouldnt organise 10man runs on ICC because he had his own little group going made up of friends and a few members of the guild.

Since then, the members of the guild I used to run have all started up new toons or left the guild and I restarted our old guild as a place where we could get together and be social and maybe do some raids together. Since then, we have recruited carefully and we are actually prospering and having a lot of fun. We have a lot of alts in the guild and about 40-50 actual members and we are slowly getting organised for Cata raiding.

Fun is the main aim of our guild and raiding together is a side effect of that fun.