Q: Why are you merging us?
A: Our goal is to give the best player experience, for that to happen we might need to merge some Realms in order to up their population. We did try putting new installs into old Realms in the past to keep them active, but 1) those new installs hated it and 2) that does not give you new friends/enemies at your ever-advancing level.
Q: What happens?
A: Your Realm will go offline (down for maintenance), for the roughly 1 hour duration of the merge. During this time:
1. All nobles return home to your keep. Regardless of if they were staged, mining, helping or even captured in someone's dungeon.
2. You and everyone else is moved over to a fresh realm with a new name, you are all moved into the south.
3. You are given a 48h bubble to protect you from PvP and keep visitors, this bubble can be popped early if you wish.
4. You will find a chest in your inventory with a gift of 1,000 gold.
Q: How do I pop the bubble early?
A: Any PvP, conquering a capital, moving to a resource parcel or aggressive noble action that could result in a capture will pop your bubble early. In all cases, if the action you are about to take would pop the bubble you will get a popup warning you, and asking you to confirm the action. Once a bubble is popped it is gone for good.
Q: What of my daily goals and event progress?
A: Events end early, and any payout is made based on your progress. Some events may restart in the new realm (letting you double dip if you wish) some may not. Daily goals reset the day's progress, but the 7-day progress is not touched.
Q: What are you not telling us?!
A: Oh yeah, bookmarks are also deleted, they are probably redundant now anyway. We also reset Global Chat. All DMs and alliance chat are untouched.
Q: Does the map change?
A: No, it is identical to the map you left behind, all county names, dungeons, mines, all the same for all realms
Q. Why has my power gone down?
A. As part of the merge all players are moved to the south in the new Realm. "Land Power" from capital ownership is therefore lost as people move off capital spots. Retake the capital to regain that power.
Q. Why has my alliance's power gone down?
A. Alliance power is the sum of members power, so see above why that's gone down. In addition, the alliance power may not be recalculated fully until every member has opened the game after the move, adding their power to the total as they do so.