Everything in yesterday’s EverQuest II Producer’s Letter by Holly “Windstalker” Longdale was a home run, with one exception:

Note that I wrote, “server consolidation” [rather than server mergers]. That’s not evasive language, but our approach. We think our best path is to consolidate some lower population servers into a new server and build a brand new server community from those players.

When asked what this means for existing character and guild names, Ry “Roshen” Schueller doubled down with this comment:

This won’t be an issue, because low population servers are being merged into a NEW server.

No names will be taken on the new server, and player names will be available on a first come basis. It should be pretty easy to grab a name on the new server before a ‘non-active player.’

Not surprisingly, this news has lit off a firestorm of concern from players who have built up eleven years of history. If indeed the new server is a “free for all” for guild and character names, then this will be a radical departure from what has been done with past server merges. We can only hope that there are some crossed wires here or that we don’t have the whole picture. Until we receive some kind of update, I’m going to hold out hope that this is what has occurred, because as-announced, this plan seems destined to create hurt feelings and precious few good experiences.

12:15pm PDT Update:

Windstalker has just responded with a clarification that, while not clearing up the naming policy, does ensure that characters will not lose any of their stuff…

On the server consolidation, don’t worry. We haven’t written the process and we are investigating server populations. Part of this work will include determining if duplicate names of guilds and characters are going to exist and how many. We will continue our plans based on all the information we can gather that will make it as smooth and as simple as possible to move your characters and ALL YOUR STUFF.

Don’t worry…we aren’t going to ham-hand this…(I’ve always wanted to use that word…).