My opinion on the whole matter:
Pros of merging:
-Post count
-Increased player base for both IOT and NES
-Experienced NES players for our IOT games and vis-versa
-Cross-pollination of ideas between IOT and NES within the same forum, which will only lead to better games for everyone
Cons of merging:
-Can' be as spammy (though there are dedicated spam threads in NES, so I'm not sure if this is true)
-We lose out "unique" culture we've forged for the past year or two
The more I think about this, the more I'm leaning towards a merge with NES into their forum, so we get postcount and all the pro's above. But the forum should change its name from just "NES" to something like "NES/IOT" or "NES and IOT". This is to show that IOT has developed it's own unique culture and isn't just another NES clone, although they are really extremely similar.
tl;dr (seroiusly?) merge the two into NES forum, rename NES forum NES/IOT or NES and IOT