I'll address some of this as I have been around this block more than a few times so to speak.

Server population -
There is always natural attrition in a MMO. While it is difficult sometimes to be able to tell the difference between natural attrition and unhealthy attrition. Often times the particular circle one person hangs in may up and head out while others remain unaffected. Right at this point our server population does seem to be generally ok. It certainly is lower than it was a few months ago, but the game in general is growing. That is really the litmus test. One of the things that our server in particular lacks is something that excites the community as a whole, which in turn encourages more people to come here.

As for cross server recruitment, that will happen and will begin to happen more due to the fact that it is difficult to pry people out of their existing Fc's. In most games that don't have the easy "social" aspect of Linkshell's this isn't as large of a problem. However you can't fully blame linkshells as they had them in FFXI and it wasn't an issue. The other problem comes from 8 man content. With everything being 8 man, people have little incentive to leave their FC and join another. There is little tangible benefit to most people. So this compounds the cross server recruitment problem because when everyone is largely locked into a static party or FC on your existing server, It makes it monumentally difficult to recruit home server. The biggest problem here is we frankly just have too many smaller do nothing guilds. It is entirely possible in this game to be a guild of 8 people and not care because of the Content and Linkshells. As such the community is heavily fragmented into a multitude of smaller groups. This over time will actually harm the server as when 1-2 people in those small groups leave, there is a higher chance of the rest of them leaving instead of sticking around like they would in a larger group.

Now concerning "Mergers" I am going to throw it out there and saying those who don't want to merge are the smart ones. Just putting it bluntly, mergers don't work. I've watched more guilds than I can count over 15+ years of gaming across many many games merge and fail. Mergers are just the single worst thing that a guild can do. Being Absorbed or absorbing is honestly the only way to go about it. Then people coming in have a clear understanding of the leadership structure, the guild culture and what they can expect. There is no power struggle, it just happens. Mergers just are a terrible way to go about things as it just leads to power struggles and chaos. As for why groups aren't getting absorbed? Well see my above comments on the content doesn't really require it. In the long run it would be healthier for most of the fragmented groups to absorb into larger ones as far as the community goes. Unfortunately most aren't able to see that and or are too young age/game experience wise to understand it. Now don't get me wrong, I am certainly not encouraging everyone to join "mega guild" take everyone no matter what types, just larger groups. Honestly the optimal size would be around the 50-75 member mark.

As for conflicting raid schedules. This was certainly something DH struggled to wrap our heads around for a while. Our background of course is large scale raiding where Everyone in the guild shows up at the exact same time/days etc. However, in this game that is completely unnecessary. Now certainly we still highly prefer to recruit people around our play time, but recruiting entire groups outside of that isn't a bad idea. You see, players don't only log in at raid time (some do yes), but generally you have people on regularly doing things. If you have multiple groups across multiple raid schedules, it means that in your "off hours" you are more likely to have more active players for the more "social" aspects of the game. So really the thing that people need to get out of their head is "Oh we can't all go to such and such FC because they raid a different schedule". Well so what? How does that stop your group from logging in at those hours? It doesn't. The only thing that impacts is replacing members or recruiting to fill holes in that particular group.

So what are some of the solutions to this?

In some things, I honestly don't know. I know myself I have changed from being willing to recruit up and coming people and trying to train them, to just simply recruiting high end players already. There were Tiers of guilds in every previous game I played where players joined everyone allowed guilds when they started, then migrated to low tier guilds while learning and ultimately applied for the top tier guilds once they felt ready to push their limits. I tried damn hard to in-house that entire progression and frankly it just blew up in my face. So as such I simply positioned our recruitment to reflect what the core group is, the group that built our guild in the first place and remains intact today. If guilds at all levels start doing that, it should work out well given it has worked in every mmo to date. Just accept whatever level you are, don't feel bad because you can't clear turn 5. Everyone has different play times/skill ceilings and even goals..Enjoy the damn game at whatever level you are.

We need to also encourage people to get out of the Linkshells are more than just a social/communications hub mindset. It is the Number 1 reason I do not post "linkshell" groups on the progression thread. Linkshells are fantastic, don't get me wrong. I think they are one of the best features of the game. However I don't view them as a replacement for a larger guild structure. They facilitate great communication between small groups, BUT for the health of the server community as a whole they are hugely detrimental in how they are used right now.

Once that happens, I think we have a chance at getting the smaller groups to start being absorbed and that will certainly help recruiting across the board.