The Kithicor/Butcherblock and Mistmoore/Permafrost Server Merges are now underway and you may be wondering if these mergers will lead to more zone lag when the Destiny of Velious expansion launches. Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:

The existing hardware should handle it fine. The merges will actually improve the performance by consolidating zones and making the hardware more efficient. There’s still the possibility of some lag because most of the population will congregate in the new zones, but we will do our best to adjust population limits to keep lag to a minimum. With the last expansion we had issues with lag in some of the new overland zones, but we will do everything we can to keep that from happening this time.

If you are finding yourself at the Character Select screen with duplicate characters or characters still indicating they exist on a server which has been merged, Rothgar offers this advice:

There’s a file on your hard drive that keeps a cache of your characters so the client doesn’t have to query the server each time. If you delete your “cache” and “logincache” directories, it should clean them up.

From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:

I just wanted to post another update and post-mortem for the Unrest merge explaining a few of the issues that occurred.

SmokeJumper has posted a message regarding Server Merges:

Hey, folks,

We’ve been posting information about the downtimes, and Rothgar has been pretty cool about talking about the issues and such, but we haven’t made an official posting. So here goes:

1) The pain is short-term. The merges are being done to make the EQII Live gaming experiences better. I think most folks agree that higher populations make better gaming, so we’re doing the merges for that reason. And we’re working hard to get most of them done *before* the holiday break.

Update: Unrest is now online!

Unrest is undergoing final testing after a followup 1 hour maintenance was required beyond the Server Merge to fix some broker and other issues. Once it’s back up, we hope Rothgar and Zoltaroth will drive safe and get some sleep (I recommend blackout curtains, they’re a staple here in Denmark) and we’ll see you back in a few hours for 2 more mergers. 😉

Tonight, Kithicor, Butcherblock, Mistmoore, and Permafrost all go under the Server Merge knife, so this means all servers will experience some loss of Chat functionality, in-game Mail, and Friends lists. On the Najena -> Unrest merge, this worked out to about 12 hours, so we expect that tomorrow, there will be 12-14 hours of these features being unavailable on ALL servers during the heart of the merge window.

Unrest returned after its Server Merge, but some additional fixes are required (regarding a Broker bug), so the server is down now to apply those fixes. In the mean time Zoltaroth is in the EQ2 Chat.

If you are on Splitpaw or Runnyeye, Innovation or Valor, Rothgar has provided the reasoning for why your server merges are delayed until after the new year:

The EU servers need database upgrades and these have to happen before we do the merge. [Further] we take holidays here in the U.S. too and many people will be gone starting next week. We have a company wide “freeze” near the end of December where we don’t do any major maintenance or hardware work so as not to risk outtages for the holiday when people are on vacation.

We’re already pushing it with the U.S. servers but the sooner we get them done the sooner we can do the non U.S servers when we return from Christmas.

Rothgar has posted some issues regarding Keymapping, Guild Hall Beacons (call of Guild Hall) and housing and guild halls to be aware of once the servers come back up.

Updated 3:15pm PST. And um, again today.

Subject to change, yadda yadda, here’s the updated U.S. Server Merge Schedule and a note about European Server Merges. From Rothgar:

Tonight will complete the second merge of U.S. servers leaving us with 4 remaining merges to perform (8 servers).  During the next two merge windows we will be performing two merges at a time.

• Najena -> Unrest – IN PROGRESS on Dec 14, 2010
• Mistmoore -> Permafrost – Dec 15, 2010 at 10:00pm PST (Dec. 16 06:00 GMT)
• Kithicor -> Butcherblock – Dec 15, 2010 at 11:59pm PST (Dec. 16 07:59 GMT)
• Befallen – Oasis – Dec 19, 2010 at 10:00pm PST (Dec. 20th 06:00 GMT)
• Nektulos -> Guk – Dec 19, 2010 at 11:59pm PST (Dec. 20th 07:59 GMT)

The schedule for the remaining non-U.S. servers will be announced after Jan 1st. We understand that the extra downtime during this process is an inconvenience and we appreciate your patience as we work through it.  We have some fun promotions coming up in December so keep your ears open for announcements.

Rothgar has posted the following update on the Najena -> Unrest Server Merge so far to include info on worldwide chat:

Update:

The merge process is moving along and still on schedule.  Nothing interesting to report, so I guess that’s good.

The chat system has been brought down as you’ve probably noticed.  This is because we are moving all universal chat data for Najena characters to the new server, Unrest.  As soon as this process is complete, we’ll bring chat back up for everyone.

So it looks like chat may not be down for the entire time of each merge. This is definately good news.

Another progress report from Rothgar:

Update:

The merge is still progressing very well.  We are hoping to bring chat back online around 1pm PST.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed for bringing Unrest up earlier than anticipated.

Server merge titles will be granted after the next hotfix.  We found an issue with the auto-consume code that was causing players to not receive the title.  If you’re reading this and were part of the Butcherblock Blackburrow merge, and already have the title item in your inventory, this item will convert into the title after the next hotfix.

Note: He meant  Blackburrow, not Butcherblock. I mix them up sometimes as well. It happens. 🙂

And yet another progress report from Rothgar:

Update:

The merge process is still going very well.  The chat merge is complete but we are running one more maintenance script while it is down.  This script should recover mail that was orphaned after the Everfrost/Blackburrow merge.  As soon as this is done, we will bring chat back up.

Rothgar has been providing updates on the EQ2 Forums:

Aaaaaand, we’re off!

Things are moving fast in the Server Merge process, and even we are having trouble keeping up. From Rothgar:

We plan to have all U.S merges done by Monday night, the 20th. International merges will come after the first of the year due to database maintenance that must be performed before we can start the merges.

Wednesday night at midnight we will perform two more mergers. Then Sunday night at midnight we will perform the final two U.S. mergers.

I’ll post the server names sometime tomorrow with the corresponding day that we are planning to do the merge.

Rothgar checked in with this announcement on the EQ2 Forums:

Monday morning will be a short maintenance in order to prepare for more upcoming mergers. The offical announcement should follow soon, but this should be a typical 7am downtime with 30-60 minute ETA.

Monday night at midnight we will begin our next merger with Unrest and Najena. Estimated downtime as with the last merger will be 24 hours but we hope to have servers up earlier. Several minor issues with the last merger have been fixed so we expect this one to go smoothly. We will do our best to keep you updated with the merger progress as it is happening.

While there were some interesting changes to how disputes over Character Names were handled in the first of these new Server Merges, Guild Names stuck with the original rules established long ago. During a Merge, if both servers have a guild of the same name, the one created first keeps its name, while the other receives an unceremonious “x” suffix.

While it has been a relatively smooth Server Merge between Blackburrow and Everfrost, it has been marred by some Guild and Player Name issues, other scheduled server downtime and maintenance, and some niggling issues with Mail.

More after the jump…

Everfrost players have reported that they are not receiving Battlegrounds tokens for either winning or losing Battlegrounds events, and also not receiving any updates on Battlegrounds Daily Quests. Rothgar has been made aware of the issue and it’s being looked into.

From the EQ2 Forums.

From Rothgar:

Ok, thank you for the info. It’s almost 11pm here tonight and there’s nothing we could do to fix it this late but I promise we will be on it first thing in the morning to determine the problem. Unfortunately its too early to tell if a fix will require a new build and downtime or something as simple as a configuration change.

I’ll keep you posted as I find out more information.

Some characters still have x or xx after their name, despite meeting the qualifications necessary to NOT have those extra characters. Namely having the character with that name, with the longest playtime.

From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:

Our rename script was interrupted by the server maintenance last night, so every name conflict has not been resolved yet. We’ve restarted the script and the remaining name conflicts should be resolved in a couple of hours.

UPDATE:  the Character/Guild Name Cleanup Script has completed running. If you still have an issue or wish to dispute the name that was chosen for your guild or character, please open a /petition.

SmokeJumper and Rothgar have been weathering the storm of the Blackburrow -> Everfrost server merge, which knocked out in-game chat channels such as 1-9, 70-79, and cross-server chats on ALL servers for 24 hours, followed by 12 hours of an even deeper chat blackout on ALL servers, with guild chat, group chat, public channels, cross-server chat, login to SOE games, and even access to the SOE forums all intermittently interrupted.

Last night, the Blackburrow to Everfrost Server Merge concluded. Here are some things you should know from Rothgar:

• Issues with Character Names are being addressed via scripts and Customer Service, so give them 24 hours before petitioning if you have character names with x or xx after the name.

• Titles are being worked on and so will become available in the next few days. Players from the Blackburrow server will be able to have a title of “of Blackburrow“.

• Some characters are reporting issues with Chat Channels and may need to rebuild their chat channel setup.

Keeping in mind that dates and servers listed are ASSUMING nothing goes wrong, check out the preliminary list of server merges from Rothgar:

We should be able to give more notice for the upcoming mergers. This first one was a special situation where we wanted to start it ASAP and just got the final green light from QA yesterday. If we had then given 48 hours notice and delayed the merger, we wouldn’t have been able to do it Thursday due to a conflicting network maintenance so the next opportunity would have been the following Tuesday, putting us a week later. We just weren’t willing to wait that long since we also may need time to adjust the merge process after the first one and before we start the following merges.

The next merges will be:

Najena -> Unrest

Kithicor -> Butcherblock
Nektulos -> Guk
Mistmoore -> Permafrost
Befallen -> Oasis
Runnyeye -> Splitpaw
Innovation -> Valor

Editor’s Note: This is not the final sequence of servers, but just a list of mergers.

I can’t give dates for the following mergers because they are very subject to change depending on any problems that occur or other unplanned maintenance.

I can tell you that if everything goes smoothly today that we will shoot for starting the next merge on Tuesday the 14th and possible the next one on Thursday the 16th.

These dates and even the order of mergers are subject to change if necessary.

From Rothgar:

The merge process is still truckin’ along on schedule with no major issues.  I hope that we will be able to have the servers up earlier than planned but that will depend on whether or not we find any merge problems after all the data has been moved.

We’ll update you again in a few hours.

Beyond the initial announcement that cross-server chat channels and in-game mail would be affected during the 24-hour long Server Merger process, players are reporting problems with all public chat channels, even server-specific ones like 1-9 and 80-90 (some would insist it’s a feature that these channels are rendered inaccessible), and Friends lists.

We’ll try to find out if we can expect this behavior on all servers during each of these Server Merges.

We’re a bit late on this, but the last update from SOE Headquarters in San Diego on the Blackburrow -> Everfrost Merge was as follows from Rothgar:

It’s 4am and the merge process is going smoothly so far with no surprises. A few steps are running faster than expected, so that’s good news.

and:

I haven’t been to sleep yet, but going to try to catch a cat nap in the next few hours so I can deal with any post-merge issues.

We have a group of very dedicated people from different departments all working together to make sure this goes smoothly. None of them are going to get much sleep tonight and some of them have another 24-hour maintenance to do right after this merge.

More as we have it.

Latest update on the Server Merge from Amnerys:

Good morning (or afternoon)! Hope everyone’s finding something to keep you busy during the downtime. 🙂 I also wanted to remind you that you can always log in to Test server if you start twitching too much.

If all goes according to plan, you probably won’t be hearing too much from us today, so don’t worry if you don’t see red names for a while. Back-end teams are hard at work on the merge, and the dev team is still doing all the pre-expansion launch stuff, so they have a full day’s work to keep them busy (or like Rothgar, they’re catching up on a few Z’s after staying up past 4am to oversee the start of the merge.)

As for me, it’s report day, and I’ve also got an article to pull together that I think everyone will be interested in reading. 🙂 Keep calm and carry on with the chat!

The Blackburrow to Everfrost Server Merge has commenced.

From the EQ2 Forums:

The Blackburrow and Everfrost servers will be merging on Wednesday, December 8, 2010. Both servers will be offline for an estimated 24 hours, beginning at 12:00 am on Wednesday, December 8. The merged Everfrost server is scheduled to come back online around 12:00 am on Thursday, December 9.

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

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

Please feel free to join in the discussion in the Blackburrow to Everfrost Server Merge Discussion Thread.