Guild Merging Doubts

My guild has been around since the betas, but it's never quite grown from a small clique. In fact, we've never actually had a full (active) 8-person team (we had a 6 person team once). We've had up to 15 members, 4 of whom left recently because of their timezone (Australian, the rest of the guild is in North America), and of the 11 remaining there are only 3 who are active enough (2 more borderline, 6 pretty much inactive).
(One of the members who left was my officer).

The only way I see to save my guild from remaining a lump of half-activity is to get an infusion of active members... i.e. a guild mergal.
But, the only candidates I know are friends guilds, and a guild I don't know well enough yet (though they seem to like the idea of a mergal). I am leaning towards merging with the larger guild of a friend of mine. Highly active in PvP, really friendly, has a TS server (I lost our guild's with the loss of my officer).

My doubts are: I don't want to simply turn over all I've worked for to someone... but is it worth me jeapordizing saving the guild just to be an officer or something in the result? I used to think it was the most important thing that someone from my side have a say in the resulting organization, but I really doubt that I'd be contributing a large enough amount to demand a place of authority.

However, I still stick with my original wish, and I am wondering if any others could give me an opinion about what they would do.
It won't be likely that my mind will change, but this is an interesting situation and I would like to see how other people would handle it.

I can see you point of view, our Guild is down to 3 active, 1 semi-active members. A merger would benfit us but the "sense" of having control over the guild or losing it. Not only that the sheer amount of work I've done to our web site if it were not to be adopted.

I think it boils down to guild concept, if your guild concept / culture is compatible with merge guild, things should be fine, if there not, foreced to change may get some conflict.

Something else to consider, When chapter 2 comes out, you will have a flood of new player, be in the new players zones, help new players and if you find people that fit your guilds culture / would fit, ask them to join.

Thank you for the input... and there are small differences in the way the guilds (mine and her's) are run.

I personally have put my heart and soul into my guild and the way it is, that's why I haven't merged it yet. The ranks are loose, and named according to the way they work (my system is different than other guilds), the way we do things is different.
I've put hours and hours into the site.

It pisses me off that it's seemingly all for nothing, and I don't think I'll be able to stand it remaining how it is until chapter 2. I'm normally a patient person, but it's been like this far too long.

But, the guilds have similar concepts, and so I have to agree with your post, as that is the most important factor.

I wish they would implement umbrella guilds...

my guild once went through a similar decision. ultimately we decided that retaining our independence was more important than being part of a huge guild. it paid off in the end. however, our situation was a bit different (~15 active members as opposed to 4) so your situation seems to be.... extreme.

you may have to confront the hard fact that very few people will join your guild since it is SO small and inactive. And with only 4 people you wont be gvg-ing anytime soon. heck, it might even be hard to team arena. People want to join established powerhouse pvp guilds. Not many are willing to stick it out and grow a new one unless they are friends (you guys are friends... but there is now too few of you) All things considered the guild is likely to only get smaller.

In that case, a merger may pay off in spades. GW is too good of a game to spend it in a 4 person guild, no matter how good firneds you are. The one thing to realize, though, is that it may be more of an absorbtion than a merger since the other guild will liekly be much larger than yours.

We have been the absorber of another guild, rather than the absorbee--but if you had asked me a couple of months ago, I would have said if anything we'd be the opposite. So, you may wish to stick it out a little longer.

I'm not sure what your goals are for your guild, but even if you have only a few people on at a time, that is very attractive to folks who have NOBODY else on when they play. When people see 2-3 of the same capes doing a mission together, that really sends a message, and you'll be swamped with people who want to join you.

My $.02.

We were having a PvP/GvG issue. Trying to get a PvE based Guild moving to do more PvP and GvG because a lot of us really wanted to, but schedules and live making meeting times hard to get the small numbers of us interested together for it. We brought up the idea of merging. Due to the fact that we're a Division of an online gaming Clan with a multiclan policy, merging with another Guild would have created countless problems, the least of which would be that we'd have 8 other game Divisions down our throats for abandoning the Clan effort.

Also was a mix of my own personal pride (ok, it's a sin but I'll admit to it) and I didn't want some Members and Officers to feel like all the hard work we had done to solidify our group, successful or not, was for nothing.

Ultimately, one of the Officers found another Guild that was the same size as us and in a similar predicament. They were willing to merge into us and use our forums. A few people were not happy about the Guild doubling in size and missed knowing everyone in the Guild so well. Over time both 'Guilds' did lose members because of this but the ones that remained all made the effort to embrace the opportunity to have more people to party with and PvP with as well as to meet new players. That was a month ago. At this point in time we are One Guild and everyone seems very happy with it.

One note - I let all of the Officers of the merging Guild to retain Officer status for a while, until we had solidified more. Then, because the increased number of Members required a more effective Leadership, I demoted, kept, and prmoted Officers based on the qualities I was looking for in the Leadership. Surprisingly, the results was still half and half of the two merging Guilds. We also adopted a new Cape for the merged Guild.

What made it work, though was the willingness of the members to embrace it as well as the mergin Officers acceptance of me as Guild Leader. That made all the difference in it being a successful, seamless merger.

Does that answer your question? I don't know, but that's our experience with Mergers if it helps.

I suppose a more direct response would be a question: what do you feel is best for your Members? If you're all still having a blast, then stay together and stick it out. If you're starting to have real problems then perhaps a merger isn't a bad idea after all.

Lysander, your post is very helpful, thank you.

At this point I'm unsure of the feelings of most of my guild, they're not on enough to tell me anything. Even forum activity is dropping.
What the guild needs is more appeal to come online more often... and for a little less pressure from real life (not the only issue, but it is one).

I have recently merged with guilds Twice in the past two week, went from a guild of 30 to make a new guild merging with another guild to make 15 members who very active and played a lot. Then recently we merged into the Boston Wasteland, we now have 50+ members and we have a lot of active people, so glad we merged with them.

I think your best bet in getting more members is to try and recruit people that are newer to the game, because like someone else said, someone who is a hardcore pvp player will probably not join a guild that is so inactive. On the other hand if you go to some of the lower missions or quests that you hated as a lower lvl player (Galrath?) And help people with that quest, you are bound to find someone who will not only respect you helping them out, but want to be a part of that type of guild who helps others.

I haven't had any experiences with merging on guild wars, but when I played heavily in counter strike, merging teams/clans never worked out. You take 2 different groups and suddenly pull them together expecting it all to work. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesnt, but for me it hasnt worked out at all on any of the occasions i've had happen.