Honestly, this isn't as bad as it appears to be. Obviously its a downer because its a sign of the deflation we are going through currently, but realistically the IM division was being diluted in skill level and the gap between even mid to high IM was huge, basically there is no difference between mid open and low IM anymore and that's not really a good thing.
With the merged division, the best teams will still come out on top and the lower end teams will still end up playing each other more due to the schedule balancing and the competition will be more balanced overall when it comes to matches, at least that's how I see it going. Throw in the occasional underdog match up in there and there is a huge margin for improvement on lower end teams, and better competition for higher end teams.
On top of that, it will be easier to actually gauge teams real skill level overall I think so that could make progression easier in terms of getting accurate and balanced practice.
Chin up boys, it could be worse.