THE FOLLOWING IS IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR PLAYERS THAT HAVE PLAYED ON MULTIPLE SHARDS.
1. Shards LIVE-1 and LIVE-2 will be merged into one shard LIVE at the conclusion of the current war on LIVE-2.
2. Players previously playing on LIVE-2 can join LIVE at that point. Note that for such players, it will appear as if their progress has been lost at this stage. Do not worry, as this will only be a temporary situation lasting several days.
3. Within several days after the merger, all XP, Levels, Ranks, and Commends earned in either shard will be combined into profiles on LIVE. At this point, any progress earned in either shard will be restored.
NOTE: See UPDATE at the bottom of this post for slight changes in the schedule for the profile merge.
After Update 44, player profile progression will always be shared across all Live shards moving forward. This means that if multiple shards become active again in the future, we won't have to go through another merging process since the profiles will be shared.
The goal of merging the servers is to reunite the userbase into a single world and also to ensure that players can be participating in a full and active war. We have no issue at all keeping both shards up as long as there is player demand.
NOTE: If there are any unexpected and sudden changes in player population or demand, the plan outlined here may change.
UPDATE 5-3-2021: To avoid disrupting the current war, the profiles from multiple shards will be merged at the conclusion of the current war on LIVE during resistance phase. We originally thought that it would be viable to do the merge in the middle of the conquest, but if there isn't a major immediate demand the process would be far less disruptive to do during resistance phase (since the merge requires us to shut down the shard for some period of time).
UPDATE 5-25-2021: We attempted to merge profiles today before the War 76 start but encountered a technical issue that delayed the war. We have determined the cause of the issue and will attempt another merger at the next Resistance Phase.