EU Server Consolidation FAQ

EverQuest II is best with friends! Over the course of the next few months, we’ll be bringing players from our EU servers together. We’ll be consolidating servers, as we did with the US servers last year.

We want to wrap this up this spring, and this is the time frame we’re currently working towards:

• Russian servers (Barren Sky and Harla Dar) are scheduled to be merged with Splitpaw on Thursday, March 31, 2016.
• By the end of April, we plan to consolidate Splitpaw, Storms, and Valor into a new server!
• We’ll be merging Sebilis (our Japanese server) into Antonia Bayle. This is scheduled to happen after the EU server consolidation.

Russian characters and guilds on these servers will be required to be renamed into names that work within the English alphabet. In-game text and all support for the game on these servers will be provided in English.

After the merge of our Russian servers (Barren Sky and Harla Dar), you may see strange symbols or boxes when looking at the list of homes to visit, the location of items on the broker, or players in your guild. This will be the case while these characters are being renamed into names that work within the English alphabet.

Players should pick up soulbound (NoTrade) items from shared housing (such as Guild Halls) BEFORE the merge. This will prevent losing ownership of placed items during this merge.

We’re happy that our EverQuest II players will continue to have a home as they continue their adventures in Norrath. We appreciate your continued support!

FAQ

General

Q: How will we be able to retain names if others have the same name?

A: In the event of duplicate character names during a server consolidation, priority will be given to the character who has logged in to the game within the past sixty (60) days. If multiple characters have logged in within the past sixty (60) days, then the character which was created first will retain their name. Other same-named characters will have an "X" (or several) added to their names automatically until their name is unique. Each player that is auto-renamed this way will be able to use /rename one time to change their name.

Q: If my character’s name is taken or modified, will I be able to pick a new name?
A: Yes, every character that is automatically renamed will be able to use /rename one time for free to choose a new character name.

Q: Will there be any elimination of characters altogether based on level, cash reserves, etc.?
A: No, there will be no elimination of characters.

Q: Should we clear our mailboxes out before the consolidation happens?
A: Mail will get transferred over to the new servers.

Q: What about the names of my pet and mercenaries?
A: Pets and mercenaries who have names using non-English letters have been renamed to default pet and mercenary names. They will need to be renamed to names using letters from the English alphabet.

Q: Will we get free character transfers?
A: After this transition, this EU server will be the place where EU players have the best play experience. Since this server is local to our EU players, we’re not doing free transfers between US and EU servers. Most EU players will lag more or experience higher rates of ping if they choose to play on US servers.

Banks

Q: Should I take the things I have in the bank or shared bank out?
A: There is no need to take anything out of the bank or shared bank. They'll all be transferred completely.

Q: Will the shared bank stay behind, attached to its original server, like in previous server shutdowns or with other character transfers?
A: This server consolidation will not behave like a character transfer nor will it behave like a server closing. We have been working for more than a year to implement all of the underlying technology that will enable us to bring over all of the data, as well as smooth out the server consolidation process.

Housing and Player-Designed Dungeons

Q: I don’t see my home on the leaderboard! What do I do?
A: We’ll be unpublishing houses and clearing out leaderboards when naming character sets are incompatible with each other, such as when Barren Sky and Harla Dar merge into Splitpaw. You’ll need to publish your house again so other players can visit your home!

Q: Does housing stuff all have to be packed into the moving crate for each house? Will housing templates be saved? (How do you do that? I forget!)
A: We are not planning any loss of anything in these consolidations. It's always good to save your housing templates, however it will not be required. Tip: go to your house, open the house window, and hit save. It'll prompt you for a template name, enter one, and then click Okay.

Q: I have numerous dungeons that are used for storage for my decorating items. Will we need to move items from dungeons to a house prior to consolidation?
A: No need, they'll all get moved to the new server.

Q: I and several friends HAVE done character moves and had published houses disappear, dungeons go missing along with content, random house items go missing, and anything in the bank gone. How will this server consolidation be different?
A: As mentioned above this is a completely separate process and not tied into our current character transfer system. We are considering converting our current character transfer system to using this process once the server consolidations have completed.

Q: Will paid house rent transfer?
A: Yes.

Q: Will depots transfer?
A: Yes, personal as well as guild depots will transfer.

Q: Will player written books and housing trophies be safe in your house, or should we move them to our bags/bank/house vault?
A: They will be safe in the houses.

Q: Will housing trophies still have our house info and date obtained on them, or will they now be blank?
A: They will still have your house info and date obtained.

Q: Are objects in our moving crates safe?
A: Yes.

Q: What if we've used a house item expander? Will our expanded items be safe?
A: Yes.

Q: Is it safe to assume that the files in our saved house layouts within the EQII folders will be preserved?
A: Yes they'll still be there. Just remember to not delete them off your hard drive.

Q: Do we need to empty house vaults?
A: No.

Guilds

Q: What happens to items that I own, but I’ve placed in my Guild Hall?
A: Players should pick up No-Trade items from shared housing (such as Guild Halls) BEFORE the merge. This will prevent losing ownership of placed items during this merge.

Q: Should I be emptying my guild hall office so I don't lose the furniture I crafted and placed there?
A: No, all guilds and guild halls will be moved onto the same server. All housing will be moved as well.

Q: If our names change, how will the members of our guild know who we are? How will the guild still be together if everyone is renamed?
A: In the guild roster everyone will keep their notes, rank, and anything else tied to that character. If a character is renamed it will be automatically updated in the guild rosters. All characters that are auto-renamed will have the option to do a free name change. If the free name change is used it will automatically update the name in the guild roster as well.

Q: How will you handle guild names?

A: Guilds on these servers will be required to be renamed into names that work within the English alphabet. If a guild is spelled with letters that don’t work in the English alphabet, the guild will be given a temporary name of Roman numerals, and the guild will be given a free guild name change. If two or more guilds have the same name at the time of the server consolidation, the oldest guild will keep the guild name, and we will append "X" to other guilds with a conflicting name. If this happens to your guild, you will be offered a free guild name change.

If you have a free guild name change, to select a new guild name the leader from a guild can use the command /guild rename <name>

If there is no leader in your guild, /initiate_guild_leader_vote can be used by guild officers to help guilds choose a new leader.

Q: Will any guilds be deleted?
A: Guilds will not be deleted during server merges or consolidations.

This little sentence at the end mains that the new server for Splitpaw, Storms, and Valor will be in english ?
So you spend the last several months not working to a new architecture where multiple languages can spare the same server, like all the new MMORPG work now ?

Yes, the new server, when all of the EU merges and such are complete, will be in English.

i see alot more lag incoming to Splitpaw if you are merging RU population onto splitpaw using old hardware oh the fun to come.

Q: Will we get free character transfers? A: After this transition, this EU server will be the place where EU players have the best play experience. Since this server is local to our EU players, we’re not doing free transfers between US and EU servers. Most EU players will lag more or experience higher rates of ping if they choose to play on US servers.

Will we be given a free transfers off Antonia Bayle? I enjoy being on an English speaking server, not that I mind other languages.. it just makes the game confusing when more than one language is spoken.. I do not understand Japanese (yes I watch my anime sub'd)

:\ I was really hoping that merge would add more name possibilities. AKA allowing the characters from other languages.) /..\ (Although, I was technically hoping the hints we got when the company moved away from Oracle would lead to great things. Namely, open serer travel. But hey, who wants a positive change, right? -.-
Smash servers together, let all the trolls congregate, let some people lose their names, make the game unplayable for people who are not fluent in english... way to go... I've tried playing on servers in other languages, just to see what it's like, and yeah, we will lose players if their languages are not available because it renders the game almost unplayable (for new players in particular, if we even GET new players anymore... Seriously, go ask people about EverQuest2. I mentioned it at a local community college in Oregon and the response I got was "What's that" or "Oh, I used to play that, but it's just full of trolls now." No one wants to come here. Word of mouth was how we used to get new players... look at what mouths are saying about this game now.)
Is it at least possible to add some sort of compatibility with an online translator for those that are not english speaking/reading? After losing so many over the ProSiebenSat.1 Games fiasco, it would be rather nice to not treat them like garbage, don't you think?

I really do not want to see this game close, but there are so many positive directions being ignored in favor of detrimental ones.

We have the technology. We can make EQ2 better than it was. Better, stronger, faster. More player friendly for all walks of life and playstyles. Open serer travel for subscribers! No more mergers! Add all language support to all servers!

>.> There are spanish and english speaking people already... Why not add languages/non-english symbols to all servers so the game is more open to a wider player base? Not only will we have more people playing (and able to read all the game text) but we will have a huge variety of names made available for new players that can't get the official spelling of the names they want. (You know, like more Kèrmít froglocks!) XD
Seriously... I saw a guy named Illllllll the other day.... Adding the other languages' symbols would be a positive change.

Whats about the german Localization(Questtext,Itemnames etc.)?
Is the entire Game then english?

The main problem I've found, with the server merges, is that it really doesn't do much to help players who want or need to dungeon crawl or raid. When I play on Maj' Dul, which is now the most populated server, I've been told, I still see people waiting over an hour for a group.

We don't need server merges as much as we need server focus on play style. For example, I rarely group, except for the toons I box, because I have special needs that would interrupt group play or raids. I can contribute to the guild welfare, with writs, etc., but I'm a dud when it comes to groups.

I would think it would make more sense to have servers for groups/raiders and servers for casual players who rarely group except in those cases where we are forced to by a quest (which I would really like to see stopped). This would also eliminate a lot of trolls who currently tie up general chat so much it is hard to make a legitimate request for help--at least for the casual player servers.

Personally, I find it hard to play of Maj' Dul due to all the players competing for limited resources. I find I'm having to play very late at night so as to avoid conflicts with other players--especially in cases where there are slow spawns of quest items. When on Maj' Dul, I usually have an EQ2 window open and some card game going at the same time.

This mainly occurs when playing in ToT where I think 95% of the players are also playing. I can't remember when I last played there that there weren't two servers up for ToT. It seems to me like that defeats much of the reason for server merges.

I'm sure other people see things very differently. I imagine that there are as many good reasons for merges as bad ones. I just wish we had better choices.

I wouldn't mind if they had a 'google translate'.. like the old Star Trek universal translator. Actually it might not be too far fetched for them to do something like that. I don't want to exclude anyone, but in turn.. I don't want to be excluded.

BTW: Nice to see someone else from the beaver state in the game,

Hmm - while I do see the reasoning behind it, I still doubt that it will work. Let us face it - english is as a language "spoken" by many, yet many are not really able to converse in it.
So baisally what will happen is that there will be small, gated communities where people can still express their views, opinions and questions in their native tongue - while at the same time loosing people that will no longer be able to understand the game enough.

Too bad - I really like the game

I believe that many players will quit in fact of the consolidation.
The "understand" thing is a fact.

Thus you lose most of the Russian, French and German players as you make them play in their native language impossible. Many can not speak English or not enough to understand the NPC´s and quests and stories.

Welcome to more lag for zero profit.

No, we are not happy about it and many will no longer support you for that. 12 years of our support and as a reward we can now only play in English.

There is no information except this sentence. This means that the new server will be operated in English and the user will not be able to use Japanese character in chat? To change the system message and quest explanation to be in Engilsh may be allowable, but if all user have to use roman character, it will be cumbersome for raid briefing and many Seblis players will quit.

What about german characters and guilds? We have ä ö ü ß ?

This FAQ is exactly the same that the one written by Holly "Windstalker" for the U.S. server consolidation at 08/31/2015.

Why dit it take so long to merge the EU server ?
What did you do for the non U.S. players all this time long ?

When the TLE servers first launched there were many different languages being spoken in chat, French, German and Swedish to name but a few, and there are Russian guilds on several US/Euro servers who always advertise in Russian, so speaking your native language in game and in group shouldn't be a problem? And as we learn to mix it up a little and the barriers come down (lets face it, there is always moaning at first when servers merge, of the "your server was pants" variety) then hopefully this is a positive move.
However, I can say that if I were moving from one of the other language servers to Splitpaw and my English wasn't strong, then the advantage gained from a larger population would be lost, as I would still only be grouping with my compatriots.
Just an observation, I don't have a ready solution.

And Г Я Ж

Will there be a free transfer from Antonia Bayle?

Indeed. Most Japanese players cannot understand English thus they have played on 'Sebilis' server. Moreover if they cannot use Japanese character, a large part of them will delete this game and say goodbye to you.So It is very very big problem whether they can use their own language or not. For non-native(English) speakers, this consolidation/merging makes them speak foreign language. 自分の国の言語で自国の人と意思疎通できないっていうのはひどいしストレスだわ。I mean it is harsh and stressful to not being able to communicate with compatriots by the own language. Rome-character takes more time and to understand each other, too.
So...could we use own character?

Oops,I forgot telling you one important thing; The translated sentences in the game is very good. Its also sad thing when merged.

tomshindo, sebilis