K there is a LOT speculation, guessing and some wrong info etc going on here. Want the facts? From someone who is in LOCO at the present time???
-Back when world first rolled over it went public right away with 10 openings (not 14 or 15 people are saying here). We had 3 join and were down to 7 openings and were that way for about 4 weeks.
-Went public to fill the last couple of openings the previous season. Commish didn't know he could have switched back to private on rollover. There is no set limit when private league becomes public. According to what someone at WIS told us, a private world can stay private indefinitely.
-WIS without telling anyone first, automatically took LOCO and Williams started the merging process. First part of that was 'forcing' 7 owners out of LOCO (they were given credits I think and have since joined other worlds etc). I think they may also have 'forced' some owners out of Williams too (not sure about that though, so I might be wrong). Either way they had 32 owners for the merged world.
-Well, some owners of BOTH worlds didn't like the merger idea. Admittedly in the forum, I'd say some of the LOCO owners were the loudest. BUT there were some from Williams as well who openly stated they were not happy.
-Now I will not get into the reasons why some didn't like the idea. It is enough that WIS decided NOT to do the merger. LOCO went private and Williams went back to being public. They have since filled and moved on (good of them, seriously.. no sarcasm).
-The thing is, LOCO had lost those 7 owners that were forced out. So it went from needing 7 before all this started, to needing 14!!! Since then I believe we lost 1 more due to "unwilling to wait" etc.
-So NOT going through with the proposed merger, LOCO is in a FAR worse state than it had been before the process started. Not the same position. Owners have tried to do some recruiting, but to avail. Group as since decided to go public, if not filled WIS may try another merger. This time I doubt you'll hear anything against it from the owners. Because, there are no other options anymore.
Them are the facts people.