ZAM takes player concerns to SOE and gets some answers.

The server mergers are scheduled to begin on or around November 16.  Despite an email and a couple of official posts on the forums, players still have some questions about the impending merges.  We combed community posts for concerns and sent them off to SOE, where Amnerys was able to get us some answers from the developers.  We hope this helps everyone plan for the mergers!

ZAM: Are legacy titles being considered for players on home servers?
SOE: No. Only players that are merged away from their original server will gain titles.

ZAM: Regarding potential guild name conflicts: If two guilds share the same name, what is the criteria for which guild will keep the name? Will active guilds have the chance of losing their name to an inactive guild simply due to the guild's inception date?
SOE: The guild that was created first, chronologically, will keep the name.

ZAM: Will the EQ2Player leveling history and/or item discoveries be wiped for anyone affected by the merges? If so, will it only affect the merging server or will it also affect the home server?
SOE: No changes will be made immediately and that won’t change until the department that owns EQ2Players has time to make new database feed changes.

ZAM: If a player has characters on both a merging server and a home server, how will items and money in the shared bank be affected?
SOE: If there is overflow after the merge, then any remaining items will just flow into the Overflow area. Coin will just add together.

ZAM: For players who have purchased a name change, will they be allowed a reimbursement and if they lose that purchased name due to the merge, and if so, is there a certain time restriction on this?
SOE: There is no special reservation for players that purchased their name. If they can’t keep their name, they’ll need to petition CS on a case-by-case basis.

ZAM: Is any consideration being given to renaming or purging extremely low level characters that have not been played for years (or possibly never got beyond the trial), even if their name is not conflicting in the merge?
SOE: Not at this time.

ZAM: Houses and guild halls seem to be the biggest concern with multiple questions posted. The following are all housing and guild hall questions.

ZAM: 1. Will both houses and guild halls be treated the same (ie: access lists, item ownership, etc) with the merges?
SOE: Yes. All will remain intact.

ZAM: 2. Will both the merging server (ex: Blackburrow) and the home server (ex: Everfrost) be subject to item ownership changes, or will only the merging server have this concern?
SOE: No item ownership changes will occur this time around.

ZAM: 3. Will both houses and guild halls be subject to having ownership removed from items, or is this limited to houses only?
SOE: Same question. Nope.

ZAM: 4. If guild halls are affected as well to the item ownership reset, will the new owner be the person who purchased the hall? If that person no longer is part of the guild, who will be the owner?
SOE: Still no. :)

ZAM: 5. If multiple lore items that were placed by alts suddenly become owned by the home owner will duplicates be deleted, or will the home owner simply be unable to pick up more than one at a time?
SOE: Not going to happen. See above. (Same as #2, 3, 4)

ZAM: 6. How will house and guild hall access lists be affected? If a character on the access list receives an "x" on their name due to the merge, will the list update to reflect that?
SOE: Same as #1. No changes will occur and everything will remain intact.

ZAM: 7. Will homes retain any crafted item count and vault expanders used, as well as the Marketplace item expanders, or will those items need to be re-purchased after the merge?
SOE: No change will occur. No reason to repurchase or reuse.

ZAM: 8. We know that it was stated that vendor crates will need replaced after the merge. However, will items need to be removed from the vendor crates first? Should the vendor crates be manually picked up by the player first?
SOE: No. They can just replace them. No need for any pre-merge scrambling.

ZAM: 9. If an item placed in a home or guild hall is owned by a deleted character, will the item be deleted or will ownership still transfer to the owner of the house and/or hall?
SOE: No change. Everything will stay the same as before the merge.

ZAM: 10. Will houses and/or guild halls affected by the merge have to re-place all of their items after the merge?  Dave Georgeson addressed this on the forums, but his answer conflicts with the official email.
SOE: As I stated previously, no, you won’t have to do diddly-squat. :)