Last week, I played on Carbon for the first time in a week and the games were noticeably tighter.  So after my session, I thought I would confirm my suspicions by looking at my 2011 data for players with 10 or more hands:

It's not as bad as I thought, since the players/flop statistic looked like it was 25-50% lower.  But I would expect the games to converge to the "FT" stats by the end of the year (if not by the end of the summer).  I'm pretty sure the games are still better than the games on FT and Stars.  

[  ] has photoshop skillz

What I find really interesting about the table above is that the FT 1/2 games were a little tighter than the 2/4 games.  I never realized it, but I'm guessing that it's because there must've been an unusual number of nits at 1/2.  I suppose up to 1/2 you can be reasonably successful playing an uber-nit style of play, where you wait for set, hit and get paid off.  Or get 3 streets of value comfortably with your overpair because people don't bluff-raise.  Sadly, that will not always be the case.

As any site gets critical mass, you should expect the games to get worse.  And as time goes on, you should expect the games to get worse - bad regs drop out, good regs stay, and new up-and-coming good regs appear.  So rather than looking at the glass half empty, you should try and look at the glass as half-full - the games at Merge are better than the games we were used to at FT (and especially Stars).  So make the most of your opportunity.

Later in the week...  withdrawing on Carbon, my comments on the site, and why I think you should sign up in the next few weeks - especially of you use my new rakeback site.  ;-)