From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:

I just wanted to check in and comment on the few people having trouble accessing their characters.

One thing you can try is deleting your cache and logincache directories. Also, you might try creating a new character on Crushbone. This normally forces a download of all characters on that server and will fix missing characters. You can then delete the temporary character.

I’m really glad to see there were so few problems with this merge. Makes sense that after so many of them they would start to get easier!

From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:

Ok, we’re there!

If you find any issues or problems, please report them here asap or message me in game. I’ll be in chat.

and regarding Call of Guild Hall, at least ONE member of your guild will have to zone into the guild manually to reactivate it:

Keep in mind there is a known issue with your Guild’s Call to Guild Hall spell.

Someone will need to zone into your GH through the door in order to re-establish that you have the call amenity. Once that is done, everyone’s spell should work again.

But I Can’t Connect!

If you have characters on Lucan D’Lere, then the first time you login, you’ll need to go to the Character Select screen and pick your character there. If you try to pick a character on your Launcher, you’ll be trying to connect to Lucan D’Lere instead of Crushbone.

From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:

The merge process is moving forward on schedule. There have been no issues so far and I’ll update again in the morning.

From the EQ2 Forums:

The Lucan D’Lere and Crushbone servers will be taken offline at 12:00am PST on Wednesday, February 16th [Thursday 16 Feb @ 8:00] and will be offline for an estimated 24 hours. The merged Crushbone server should be back online sometime around 12:00 am PST on Thursday, February 17th.

The following services will be affected for all EQII servers during this downtime and may experience interruptions:

• Cross-server chat
• Chat channels
• In-game mail
• Friends Lists

We apologize for any inconvenience and will resume all affected services when the merge is complete.

and this update:

Lucan will be coming offline at 9pm PST [05:00 GMT]  to prepare for the merge.

From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:

Things are going very well and considering the extra time we expected from moving the data a long distance, we’re actually running ahead of schedule. Our QA department is checking things out now and if we don’t find any issues we hope to have the server up early.

Thanks for your patience during this downtime!

and later:

Update:

We are still having some issues with the chat portion of the merge, its just taking a little longer than expected to move friends lists, mail, etc.

Everything else looks good so as soon as I have more info, we will let you know.

Instead of two downtimes, the Runnyeye -> Splitpaw merger will happen in one fell swoop.

From the EQ2 Forums:

The Runnyeye and Splitpaw servers will begin merging on Thursday, February 3, 2011.

Runnyeye will be taken offline for the last time at 2pm PST (10pm GMT) on Thursday, February 3.

Splitpaw will be taken offline at 9pm PST on February 3 (5am GMT on February 4).

Splitpaw will then undergo the regular weekly hotfix before merging. Once the hotfix has completed, the server will stay offline for another estimated 27 hours while the merge takes place.

The merged Splitpaw will be offline for an estimated 27 hours and is scheduled to come back online as soon as the merge has completed. We estimate an uptime of around 8 am GMT on February 5.

Revising a previous announcement, here is a notice from the EQ2 Forums:

This is a notification that Splitpaw will be updated at 12:00 AM London Time on 02/02/2011. The estimated downtime will be 18 hours.

– SOE Operations team

A new date for the Splitpaw/Runnyeye merger has yet to be announced.

From the EQ2 Forums:

The Lucan D’Lere and Crushbone servers will be taken offline at 12:00am PST on Wednesday, February 16th and will be offline for an estimated 24 hours. The merged Crushbone server should be back online sometime around 12:00 am PST on Thursday, February 17th.

A brief update from the EQ2 Forums:

The merge has been postponed temporarily while we work out some of the back-end logistics. We will update again when we have more information.

The Runnyeye to Splitpaw European server merge has been announced. This server merge was initially delayed because of the necessity of a database upgrade to support the merged server. All told, Splitpaw will be down for virtually all of February 2 and 3. For some folks, February will only have 26 days this month. Details after the jump.

From the EQ2 Forums:

Due to the EQII Russian server merge (The Nexus and Barren Sky) on January 25, 2011, chat services will be unavailable for Valor (DE), Storms (FR), Splitpaw (UK) and Harla Dar (RU) for at least 12 hours.

We expect chat to be affected from 3:30 PM PDT on 01/25/11 until 4:30 AM PDT on 01/26/11 (26/01/11 00:30 –  26/01/11 13:30 C.E.T ~ 01/25/11 11:30 PM – 01/26/11 12:30 PM London time).

This announcement did not mention Runnyeye or Innovation, but we’re assuming they will be affected as well. Update: Runnyeye and Innovation are not affected because they are not located in the US.

Akella has announced that the two Russian PvE EQ2 Servers (Nexus and Barren Sky) will merge on January 25, 2011.

• Announcement on EQ2 Russia Forums
• Announcement (through Google Translate)

It looks like those plans to merge Lucan D’Lere with Crushbone weren’t quite so preliminary and subject to player input. From SmokeJumper:

It’s official. We’ll be doing the merge that Rothgar describes. LDL will merge with Crushbone. Sometime in early February, preferably. (It’ll take a bit to get everything set up for it.)

Rothgar has put forth a possible server merge scenario for folks on the Lucan D’Lere server. This is not a merger that would be taken lightly, as Lucan D’Lere is a Role-play server and there is currently no server that its members could merge to that wouldn’t result in an overpopulated server. It will be interesting to read player reaction to the idea of merging with a non-RP server.

I’ve finally managed to escape Charles de Gaulle airport which completely ground to a halt due to 3 inches (7cm) of snow. Meanwhile, our SAS pilot made a perfect landing in near whiteout conditions with heavy snowfall on a runway and at an airport positively blanketed with snow. Ah… Copenhagen… 😉

Anyway, ’bout those server merges…

The latest from Rothgar on the merge:

Oasis should be unlocking now.

8 hours ahead of schedule isn’t bad!

Here’s the latest update from Rothgar:

Update:

Both merges are still going great, no issues so far.  We hope to have the chat portion of the merge done in 2 or 3 hours.

FYI, this will be the last merge of the year.

Update from Rothgar as of 1:49pm PST:

Update:

We’re ahead of schedule on the merges today.  Chat should be back up any minute now and the servers are being QA’d as we speak.  Hopefully if there are no QA issues we will have the servers unlocked in an hour or two.

Also, if you happen to have characters on both of the servers that are being merged into one, Rothgar explains what happens with the shared bank:

If you have characters on both servers that are being merged, and both characters have items in the shared bank, one of the banks will have it’s contents put in your overflow.  This is because we can’t merge the two shared banks into one bank due to slot conflicts.  So if you log in and find stuff in your overflow, thats most likely the cause.  Everything else should merge fine.

Befallen/Oasis and Nektulos/Guk (BONG for short 😉 ) Server Merges are underway.

From Rothgar:

Everything is going great on merge 1. Set to begin merge 2 in 20 minutes.

Everything is still on schedule. I’ll update again in the morning.

Our updates will be spotty as I was affected by airport weather delays. Best of luck to Rothgar, Zoltaroth, and all merging players. 🙂

Those servers which have completed their merges are experiencing crowding in main chat channels, specifically 1-9 and auction. Fortunately, some adjustments are being made to resolve the matter. From Zoltaroth:

We are looking into increasing the channel limits.

and later:

We have identified the issue and are working on a fix.

Barring any other major news, we’ll be rather content-light until just prior to Sunday night’s server merges. Just got back from the Eiffel Tower. Peace. 🙂

Latest update from Zoltaroth:

Update:

Butcherblock should be open within the next 15 minutes.

Permafrost is going into QA.

Also, I can personally confirm that Butcherblock is in fact back online right this second. I’m logged in and checking out the new digs. 🙂

And this in as well from Zoltaroth:

We are opening up Permafrost now.

And we have confirmation from Quesera in the comments that Permafrost is up.

From the EQ2 Forums:

Butcherblock looks good so far.  QA is still working on it but no major issues yet.

Permafrost is almost ready to come up for QA testing as well.

All in all we are ahead of schedule and everything is looking good.

From Zoltaroth:

We are bringing up BB shortly, once it is up QA will be doing their testing so if that goes well it should be open in a few hours.

Permafrost is waiting on Chat server meges to complete we expect about 3pm for that to be done.

Here’s our latest update from Rothgar:

Both merges are still on track and actually running a little ahead of schedule. However, we can’t start QA until we have the chat merge done. I’ll be out of the office soon so I’ll see if Zoltaroth can keep you guys updated.

From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:

The merges are still going fine.  The chat/mail portion of the merge is a little behind schedule unfortunately so chat may be down longer than expected.  I’ll try to provide an ETA later today.

From Rothgar:

Update:

So far everything is still on schedule. Chat is due to come down in about an hour so we can move mail and friends lists.