As announced a few weeks ago, we will merge the Age of Conan servers before the Christmas Holidays (UPDATE: This plan has changed. Please read the December Letter from the Game Director for details). Today we want to give you some detailed information about how these merges will happen and what this will mean for you, the players.

We will be spreading the server merges over the next few weeks so not all the servers will be merged at the exact same time. It is important to us to ensure that the merge process goes as smooth as possible. Therefore it is vital that we spread out the work rather than doing these complicated processes all at the same time in order to minimize possible risks.

The first servers that will be merged are the US servers ‘Bloodspire' and ‘Hyperborea'. The list of servers for the next merges will be published shortly.

It is important to know that during the time servers will be merged, all servers of the same territory (US or EU) will not be available. This means that during this week's downtime - where the two above mentioned servers are merged - all US servers will be unavailable. The exact duration of such a downtime will be announced soon but we do expect them to be longer than the usual update downtime.

When the merge process is complete we will be giving all active subscribers an appropriate amount of free game-time to compensate for the additional downtime required for the merges. The details of this will be communicated once the merge process is complete.

It's important for us to ensure the best game-play experience for you all, and more healthy populations on each and every server will make sure we maintain healthy communities for the game in the future.

Once the merges are complete we will be offering a free one-use character transfer option for all characters so that if you wish to join a different community after the merge than the one you were allocated you are free to do so. This transfer will be free of charge and can be used once per character and will be available from your billing pages.

Also after the merges are complete we will be opening up new ‘fresh start' servers in both the US and EU territories. One each for PVE and PVP rulesets. Transfer will not be allowed to these servers after the merges. These new servers are designed to allow players to start afresh in a totally new environment should they wish to do so and forge a new community instead of joining one of the newly merged ones.

Please also check the Server Merge FAQ which should answer most questions on the topic.


(You can discuss this newsbit in the forums right here.)