Rumors of Rift Server Merges Unfounded

On Thursday, news splashed across the blogosphere that Rift was going to be merging several of its servers.  The rumor even included a list of alleged merge plans.  These were based on a Message of the Day that was misinterpreted.

Trion Worlds did not immediately respond to these rumors, so they grew quickly and had stretched across the gamer world by the end of the day.

The next day, however, the developer did finally say something about it.  Rifts, said Trion, will not be seeing any server mergers.  The message was regarding shards (what Rift/Trion calls sub-servers) were to be turned into trial servers for a future trial promotion.  Speculation now is that this promotion will be a free to play (F2P) event.

The reconfiguration happens tomorrow and players are advised to move their characters before then.  The server shards to be moved are:

PVE
Belmont –> Millrush
Galena –> Millrush
Atrophinius –> Greenscale
Crucia –> Greenscale
Alsbeth –> Shatterbone

PVE – RP
Estrael –> Faeblight
Shadefallen –> Faeblight

PVP
Sunrest(PVP-RP) –> Deepstrike
Freeholme –> Deepstrike
Dayblind –> Deepstrike
Faemist –> Briarcliff