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.

Battlegrounds vs. Oasis

Battlegrounds were locked this afternoon/evening due to significant lag and zone time issues. The servers were also rebooted. However the biggest issue is that Oasis is almost unplayable for some players.

This quote from the EQ2 Forums:

We’re aware of the problems facing the Oasis server right now and several people are working on it.  It will be addressed more fully tomorrow when everyone is back in the office and I’m sure we’ll have more information then.  There is an active thread on the Oasis server forum.

Character Corruption

A few players are reporting sporadic issues with losing AAs, levels, gear, etc. after lagging out from playing in Battlegrounds. I and others have played Battlegrounds and not had issues, so this seems pretty random issue. Sometimes, I did have a 5-10 minute wait leaving the Battleground and being sent back to my home server, but saw no other issues.

A Word about Forum Moderation

When I started using the EQ2 Forums I remember how intolerant the moderators were towards differing opinions and constructive criticism. Any kind of useful feedback was deleted and members banned for expressing themselves. I just plain stopped posting there. I, along with thousands of other players, moved to EQ2Flames.

It is only under Kiara‘s guidance that the EQ2 forums clawed their way back to being a place where constructive criticism is allowed and players are truthful about their favorite parts as well as the major issues within EQ2. She has fought at every turn to allow players to speak their mind.

Do I think Kiara is perfect? Of course not. Nobody is. But in my 9 years experience in moderating 2 other forums, I think she’s doing a damn good job.

And yet, in the past couple of months, I have noticed unbelievable hostility towards her, blaming her for EQ2 development choices, database issues, expansion launch pains, etc. I see people shooting off at the mouth about things they don’t even understand.

But what has really turned my stomach is when I heard about players gloating to their friends that they reported her to her supervisor.

You know, I manage to post on the EQ2 Forums and express EXACTLY what I feel I need to say about all of the shortcomings and problems at SOE and the EQ2 development, and I manage to do so without getting banned. And when Kiara has done something I’ve disagreed with, I’ve told her. We’ve had some pretty heavy conversations. 😉

But really, if someone out there is too chickenshit to resolve their issues with Kiara, why don’t you send *me* a mail here on EQ2Wire. You might learn something.