Trion Worlds will merge its low-population servers into its larger ones.

If you play RIFT, your whole world is about to change – well, maybe. Trion Worlds will be merging its low-population shards into several of its medium-sized ones. The hope is that these merged servers will have a more stable, healthy population. The mergers will occur on October 23rd for North American shards and October 24th for European shards. Below are the mergers that will occur:

North America, Oct. 23
Necropolis (PVP/Med) added to Seastone (PVP/Low)
Shatterbone (PVE/Low) added to Wolfsbane (PVE/Med)
Threesprings (PVE/Low) added to Deepwood (PVE/Med)

Europe, Oct. 24
Volan (PVP/Low) added to Bloodiron (PVP/Med)
Blightweald (PVE/Med) added to Gelidra (PVE/Med)
Argent (PVE-RP/Low) added to Zaviel (PVE/High)
Nomi (PVE/Low) added to Brisesol (PVE/Med)

Other things to note:

• Conflicting character and guild names will be required to change (for free).
• Trion Worlds is also planning on making multiple languages possible on one server. Presumably, this would allow further mergers down the road using shards with different languages.
• UPDATE: Inactive characters will have their names reset on October 23rd. To preserve your name you must log in to each inactive character before that date.
• UPDATE: If you will go over the limit of 12 characters on a shard after the merge you will be unable to access some characters until others are deleted or moved to a different shard (more info here)
• UPDATE: Though we can't find a precise answer regarding whether or not the Argent shard will lose its roleplay tag, some of the RIFT team posts indicate that the designation will not be carried over (example here)

This will no doubt be a disappointment for plenty of people as already expressed in the 50+ page forum discussion. Will the bigger shard populations make up for it? Let us know your thoughts on these mergers and how they might affect you.

Colt "ShdwFlm" Casey
Deputy Editor