[2022] 16 hours maint? Kakul release?

Going to address a couple of points here.

• Server merges have been something the team has been preparing for across several months now, which includes sending team members from AGS to the SGR offices in Korea for the last couple of weeks (who are still there). Yes, this will require an extended downtime, but that is the reality of the merge tech and data transfer that is happening. Hiring on new staff and adding bodies to work on the merge will not magically make it happen faster.
• Servers are all coming down at 12 AM PT as per usual. We will bring regions up as quickly as possible as soon each of them are ready. Yes, it is unfortunate some folks will have a few hours of a delay on being able to play new content, but the content is weekly, it isn’t going anywhere, and locking every single player out of the game due to the merges did not feel like the correct path, especially when some regions are not being touched by this work at all. If this was “world first” content, this might be a different story.
• Name changes to servers were taken on account of player feedback. Hopefully folks like these more than the original names that were released, but opinions surrounding names for things are extremely subjective and we won’t be changing them again.
• We have a rollback plan if something goes sideways with server merges so that player data will be safe and folks will be able to play the game while we reassess. We will not delay or remove content from the wider game if this happens.
• We have server populations being closely monitored. If we need to merge more servers together in the future, we will.
• The team is looking at ways to improve the economy, but it is challenging to do in a player-driven economy. RMT and bot gold has not helped this, but it’s something we’re aware of and looking into more unique ways to mitigate it.

Cheers