Vanguard servers will merge into one and put character names at risk

Sony Online Entertainment announced its plans to merge the two remaining servers for MMO Vanguard into one, come April 4 at 10 p.m. PDT.

Taking to the game's official site, the developer warned servers will be down for a 24-hour period as the merging process begins. Come April 9, the European Halgar server will permanently be taken offline, following its merge with the Telon server.

Any character over level 10 will be moved to the newly merged server during this time, while characters under level 10 that have logged in between Oct. 3, 2012 and April 3, 2012 will also be moved. The merge will increase the likelihood of characters that share the same name. In order to combat this, the character that last logged in will retain their name while others will be prompted to change their character name at their next attempted log-in.

Users who purchased in-game housing on the Halgar servers will be reimbursed and will need to buy new housing plots. House items, fixtures and building material will be returned to the player via a merchant.

A complete server merge FAQ is available here.