Lineage 2 developers announced today that several North American servers will be merging in the near future due to low server populations.

Since we opened server transfers in February this year, we've all seen a noticeable shift in what servers the Lineage II population is playing on. Many players transferred from some of the lower population servers to the higher population servers in the name of greater competition and more players, while others simply transferred to play with others in their region. All of these are very valid reasons and we're happy to offer our players the choice to move to a server they would prefer.

The heart of Lineage II has always been its clans and highly competitive PVP, be it grand-scale castle and fortress sieges, or one-on-one combat. I think we can all agree that being a part of hundreds of players on a castle battle field is an incredible adventure that all should be able to partake in. We recognize that in order to offer the best experience equally for all of our players, some population balancing is needed.

In an effort to improve the overall health of our servers and maintain the very highest quality Lineage II experience for all of our players, we will be combining several of our North American servers. We aim to make this as smooth and painless a transition as possible for our community and believe that the end result will be a more lively and thriving server community for all.

Over the next few weeks, we will be here to answer your questions and address your concerns. We would like to stress that we are not combining servers because of a lack of players or because Lineage II is on the decline. That is not the case; the Lineage II community is as strong as ever, and our players remain dedicated, enthusiastic, and active participants. Our goal is to balance the population for the health of the servers, and in the spirit of Lineage II, to ensure the best possible competitive environment for all and, in turn, promote server growth. Please read on for all the details.

Server Merge Date

July 8, 2008

Servers to Be Merged

The server merge plan is based upon current server population balancing needs and the physical locale of the server hardware. Servers 1 through 5 are located in North America on the West Coast and servers 6 through 8 are on the East Coast. As such, only servers in the same physical location are eligible to be merged. With that in mind, below is the server merge plan.

Server 2 (Sieghardt) + Server 5 (Erica) = New Server A

Server 3 (Kain) + Server 4 (Lionna) = New Server B

Server 6 (Gustin) + Server 8 (Hindemith) = New Server C

*Please note that the new servers will not experience any latency issues as a result of two server populations being combined on them. The new populations will still be below our very highest population servers.

The new server names are yet to be determined. We will be requesting server name nominations and creating an official poll from the top picks. This will be done in each individual server forum on the official website. We will take nominations until June 19th at 5:00 PM Central time. The names will be voted upon and ultimately chosen by each of the server communities.

After the merges, the old server names will be deleted and not used again.

Servers 1 (Bartz), 7 (Devianne), 9 (Teon), 10 (Franz), and 11 (Luna) will not be involved in these merges.

Account Services

In order to facilitate the smoothest possible merge, all account services will be turned off one week prior to the merge. We are also turning off all transfers to the affected servers on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 (after the regular weekly maintenance).

Characters
Characters will transfer over with all of their individual belongings, including all items and Adena in their private warehouse, inventory, and equipment slots. Individual character status and info, such as quest info and karma, will also transfer over intact with the exceptions of hero status and Olympiad points, which will be reset.

Dormant Character Deletion

In order to minimize duplicate character names, all characters that are level 10 or lower and have not logged in for more than one year will be deleted.

To prevent the character deletion, that character simply needs to be logged in once prior to the server merge.

Character Name Conflict Rules

Details to be posted soon

Character Slots

If you have more than a total of seven characters between two servers that are being merged, the seven characters that have the most EXP will be kept-the rest will be deleted.

If you have more than a total of seven characters between two servers that are being merged, and their EXP is the same, the older character(s) will be deleted.

Miscellaneous

All characters will be moved to the nearest town.

Character creation will be turned off on the merged server for one week after the merge.

All unique colored names from Battle Tournament will be reset.

Clans & Alliances

All alliances will be disbanded.

Clan information and organization, such as Clan Warehouse, Reputation Points, Clan Skills, clan level, clan leadership and ranks, etc. will be transferred.

The in-game clan community board and clan crest will be reset.

All clan wars will be ended.

Clan Name Conflict Rules

Details to be posted soon

Castles, Manor, & Clan Halls

All castles, manors, and clan halls will be reset.

All clans that own a castle/siegeable clan hall prior to the merge will be reimbursed with clan reputation points.

Castle Warehouse will be initialized and all items will be deleted.

All clans that own an auctionable clan hall will be reimbursed with Adena (winning bid amount) two weeks prior to the merge. The reimbursed Adena will appear in the Clan Warehouse. Clans who purchase an auctionable clan hall after the two weeks prior to the merge will not be reimbursed.

The manor system and all items associated with it, such as seeds, will be reset.

All fortresses will be reset.

The first castle siege time for a merged server is to be determined.

Olympiad

Olympiad points will be reset.

Hero status and associated hero weapons will be reset.

Miscellaneous

Cursed weapons, Seven Signs Quest, and the in-game community board will be reset.

Seal Stones and Ancient Adena will be transferred and deposited Seal Stones will be returned to your characters. Seal Stones that were contributed to the priest of each cabal will be converted into Ancient Adena and placed in your private warehouse prior to the server merge.

The Hellbound stage unlocked will be set to the highest stage reached between the two servers being merged.

Auction sales rewards will be deleted if you do not collect them prior to the merge.

Pet names will be reset.

Character's in-game email will be deleted.

Friend lists and ignore lists will be reset.

Raid points will not be transferred.

So plan accordingly...