ArcheAge players, the long-awaited Evolution has arrived. As some of ArcheAge's servers are merging, Trion Worlds is granting players who are affected by the merge, 3 options: transfering your character to a higher population server, re-rolling a new character on one of the Fresh Start servers, or to participate in the server merge process.
Before we go into further detail, it's good to know which servers are affected by the merge. The following servers in both the North America and the Europe region will be affected:
North America
Naima and Enla will be merged to form Kraken.
Inoch and Calleil will be merged to form Hanure.
Ezi and Lucius will be merged to form Nazar.
Europe
Aier and Orchidna will be merged to form Anthalon.
Melisara and Nebe will be merged to form Sirothe.
Nui and Janudar will be merged to form Leviathan.
If you are affected by the merge, you can choose one of three options.
Option 1 - Elect to transfer your character to one of the high-population servers.
If you wish to not participate in the server merge, you'll be giving a one-time chance to perform a free transfer of your characters to one of the servers on your region that is not affected by the Evolution. In order to transfer, you will have to fulfill certain requirements before making the move (which can be found below). You will also have to sign up for a transfer on the official website between August 25 and September 4, 2015.
In order to qualify for a free transfer, you must fulfill all of the below requirements:
Your character must be on a server affected by the Evolution.
Your character cannot be online.
You may not possess over 200,000 gold.
You may not be a member of a guild or a family.
You cannot have any marketplace mail or in-game mail.
You may not have any items listed on the Auction House.
You cannot own any land.
You cannot have a dry dock under construction.
Your character cannot be queued for deletion.
You must have all summonable vehicles and items fully repaired.
Your character must be level 15 or above.
You can only transfer everything in your inventory, warehouse, and equipped to your character. If you have more items that cannot fit in this amount of space, we recommend sending those items to your alternate characters and then transferring them to the same server. Players with storage chests will have to unpack their chests if they wish to transfer. We know this is a major pain point for everyone involved, but we were unfortunately unable to find a workable solution to this issue within the architecture of the game.
You cannot transfer while you own any items specific to the server.
Once you fulfill all of the above requirements and submit your transfer request, your character will be locked. Once locked, you will be unable to perform any action that would break one of the requirements above.
All characters involved in the transfer will be sent to their new servers on September 8, 2015.
If the name you have is already taken on the server you have chosen to transfer to, you'll have to choose a new name. It'll be checked and, if it is available, will be reserved for you. You will keep your original name until the moment of the transfer and your name will be automatically renamed after the transfer.
Option 2 - Stay on your server and be involved in the merge process.
If you choose to stay on your server, your character will take part in the upcoming merge and will continue to live on one of the Evolution servers mentioned above (Kraken, Hanure, Nazar, Anthalon, Sirothe or Leviathan. When you choose this option, the following bullet points apply:
We will increase the max number of characters on a server to 6 after the Evolution.
Items that are normally destroyed during a land demolish must be packed up into your character’s inventory or warehouse in order to prevent their destruction.
We will be providing full kits to all land owners as well as an additional compensation package. The exact items that will be provided in this package are still being determined by Trion and XL.
No guilds or families will be carried over to the new server. All guilds and families must be reformed after the merge.
No castles will be kept during the merge. All castles must be reclaimed after the Evolution is complete. Castle owners will receive a compensation package after the Evolution. The exact items available in that package are still being determined by Trion and XL.
We are still discussing with XL how name conflicts (two characters with the same name on the same server) will be handled. Once the final details of this system are set, we will formally announce them.
Option 3 - Create a new character on a Fresh Start server.
As for your last option, you will have the ability to restart your ArcheAge career by playing on one of the brand-new Fresh Start servers. One new server will be added to each region. The only way to play on this specific server will be to create a new character at level 1. No characters may transfer to this server, and transfers will be locked out for a period of time after the server opens.
The Evolution will is currently set to take place in mid-September. The transfer sign-ups, however, will take place long before the Evolution. Here are the current dates for everything related to the Evolution progress:
August 25: Server Transfer Signups begin (Evolution-affected players only.)
September 4: Server Transfer Signups end. No further transfer requests will be taken after this date. All characters on affected servers must be locked in at this point, or they will be involved in the server merge.
September 8: All transfers will be processed at this time. It is currently our plan to take the game offline at some point during this day as we process all of these transfers (in order to ensure they operate smoothly). These plans are still subject to change.
Mid-September: ArcheAge North America & Europe will be taken offline to begin the server Evolution and Auction House cluster changes. This work will take approximately 2 days to complete. At this time all servers will have their character cap raised from 4 to 6. XLGAMES developers and the Trion ArcheAge team will be gathered together in Austin, TX to oversee the work.
For more information about the server merges, you can check Trion's official announcement here.
