According to the February patch notes, zones should no longer suspend mercs when there's a high population. Earlier this evening, I was in a pick of Laurion Inn (9 players in it) that shut down. Not only did my characters not spawn at the zone in (they popped in the same spots they were at in the pick), but the mercs I had out got suspended when I zoned into the base zone. They had no timer on them...I could immediately unsuspend them. I don't know if this is something solely related to picks, or a one-time glitch, or something else.
If you are in a /pick that shuts down on you, you always appear in the same spot in the base zone as not to penalize you for losing the /pick. That's not new. No idea about the merc situation as I have not been in a LS zone with a merc under the new rules yet.
Yeah, I wasn't sure if that was a bug or not. Normally, when my group (or just me if boxing with mercs) sees the warning about the pick about to shut down, we usually switch over to another pick or base zone. So, I can't remember the last time I was in a pick that actually shut down. But I was in that pick for a good 30 min before it shut down and never got any warnings about it shutting down...and those things are hard to miss with how I have my chat windows set up.
