We’ve known about Final Fantasy XIV’s upcoming server mergers for a long time, since December when Square initially announced them. At the time, Naoki Yoshida commented that Square would be taking a look at the server populations after billing began and judge how many servers to merge afterward. He also stated at the time that the mergers were expected to be temporary, until FFXIV 2.0 launches in late 2012 and an anticipated surge in returning players necessitates for more servers.
On the Lodestone today, Square Enix is finally ready to discuss brass tacks. The original eighteen servers will be merged down to ten, on March 27th. Players will have much of the month in order to designate a destination server to move to, and worlds will be locked as they fill up in order to prevent overpopulation.
Name duplicate rules on characters and retainers are based on whoever has an active subscription as of March 26th, and then on which character is older. Linkshells will be deleted, as will friends/block lists.
(Source: Lodestone)
MMO Fallout 