What was your merger experience like? advice?

[33kerry]

<p>We are not getting much advice on how to prepare for our Vox to Naggafin merger. There are however many rumors about shared banks and where not to log off and so forth?</p><p>Could you please post your  experience when you merged into another server. Any advice that you can give based on your personal experience would be appreciated.</p>

[Vitriol]

<p>Splitpaw and Runnyeye didn't have many issues that I recall....</p>

[Brook]

<p>Just empty the shared bank on one of the servers to prevent potential problems from overloaded slots. Save the layout of any housing you might want to keep, it usually doesn't mess it up but I have had it screw up a couple of layouts.</p>

[Jrral]

<p>My thoughts:</p><ul><li>Don't be logged on to characters on those servers during the merger. Preferrably don't be logged on at all. Those servers will be down during the merge, but I'd be clear of them a good hour or so before the merge to give the backups and state saves plenty of time to happen before the merge process starts picking up character data.</li><li>If you've got characters on both servers, clear out your shared bank on the server that's going away. They'll probably have something in place to handle merging shared banks, but it can't hurt to play it safe. The shared bank on the target server won't be messed with, and if the one on the server that's going away doesn't have anything there's nothing to get messed up.</li><li>Anything your characters on the server that's going away that's placed in a guild hall or someone else's house, pick it up before the merge. Your own house will transfer smoothly, but items placed somewhere you don't own are most likely to glitch during the transfer. Anything you can't pick up, packing it in a moving crate may minimize the chances of a glitch.</li><li>After the merge, don't be too eager to log in. Just because the servers are unlocked doesn't mean things are completely stable yet. Give it at least 15 minutes after the servers unlock before trying, or better yet wait for the official announcement that the merge is done and the servers are open. If something's broken, it'll still be just as broken in 15 minutes so there's no need to be in a hurry to find it</li><li>If something's broken after the merge, don't panic. Remember that CS expects glitches after something like this. Submit a petition and give them time to respond to it. Maybe check the forums for an announcement about the problem. If you haven't heard anything after an hour or two, then something's wrong.</li><li>If you've got a raid or something else important scheduled the day of the merge? Seriously consider cancelling or postponing it. You know there's going to be issues. You know people are going to find things messed up. It's a lot less stressful for everybody if they can deal with the mess without a deadline looming over them.</li></ul>

[Gorpier]

<p>Well, its been a long time for me but back when Guk merged with Everfrost (wow that was a long time ago) I don't recall having any issues at all.  I logged out one day and logged back in with all my stuff, housing etc on Everfrost.</p>

[Cyliena]

<p>Only issue I had was having to re-place all my sales containers in my house. I had chars on both EF and Blackburrow and kept my shared empty on Blackburrow and had no issue there.</p>

[Troubor]

<p><cite>33kerry wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>We are not getting much advice on how to prepare for our Vox to Naggafin merger. There are however many rumors about shared banks and where not to log off and so forth?</p><p>Could you please post your  experience when you merged into another server. Any advice that you can give based on your personal experience would be appreciated.</p></blockquote><p>My original server, Lucan d'lere merged with Crushbone maybe a month before DoV went live, so early 2011.  I don't remember any major issues really.</p><p>The only things that stuck out that I do remember are the following:</p><p>1)  I had to place all of my salescrates back, none of them were in my house.  The rest of my home items were fine on every character.</p><p>2)  One character did have his friend list completly disappear, I had to remake it from memory.  The rest of mine didn't have that issue.</p><p>3)  My chat channels changed numbers (i.e. 80-89 went from /3 to some weird number like /12 for instance), so I had to redo that for every character so they would be the old numbers, or at least ones easier for me to remember.</p><p>For the record, I only had characters on LDL, not Crushbone but my shared bank had no issues at all.</p><p>That's about it, other then small things like that there was no hassle.  They actually do seem to have mergers down to a science now.</p>

[33kerry]

<p>Thanks for all the helpful advice.</p>

[MentalSword]

<p>I think the biggest real potential issue is names...</p><p>If the website is ready in time, you can look up your guild and character names on the new server and see if the exist. If they do, you can compare the creation dates. If your toons or guild are younger than ones on the target server, your names will have an "x" appended to them.</p><p>If this happens, you can request free name change potions, but you will have to come up with new names.</p><p>My transition from Steamfont to Oasis went smoothly, but we lost our guild name to a defunct guild with six inactive players when they merged in Befallen.</p>