From a customer service notification on EQLive:

New Worlds of Adventure

On January 21, 2009, EQ will be consolidating "The Combine" server and "Druzzil Ro (Xev)" server into one server to be titled "Druzzil Ro (Xev, Combine)." The merge will begin at 3 a.m. PST and will last approximately five hours.

In addition, in conjunction with the upcoming EQ 10th Anniversary celebration, SOE is expecting to add a new EQ server in March 2009 and players will be able to vote on a new server type. To provide your input on the type of server you'd like, you can visit EQplayers.com later in January to vote in a poll.

We hope that these changes will provide players with an even more enjoyable EQ experience.

Character Names

Priority for character names will be based on the date the character was first created. Subsequent players with the same name will have an "x" appended to their name until a unique name can be determined. The same process will be applied to guild names. Players who wish to change their names can type "/changename" into their chat windows. Guilds that wish to change their names will need to use the "/petition" command.

Inactive Characters

Accounts with characters below level 10 that have been inactive for six months or more will be purged from the EQ system.

Accounts with More Than Eight Characters

Accounts with characters on the merging servers will have their character names alphabetized, and only the first eight listed will be accessible until characters are deleted to make room. Any characters past the first 8 are not deleted, they are simply inaccessible until one of the first 8 is deleted to make room.

Shared Banks

If a player's account has characters on both servers, the most recently updated bank will have priority unless it is empty. Players must empty out the shared bank they don't want to keep before the merge. If players wind up with the wrong shared bank (they didn't empty out the other one in time, etc.) they can use "/petition" to have the other shared bank copied over.

UI and Character Settings

All character UI and character settings will need to be reset.

Corpses

All corpses will be sent to Shadowrest.

EQ players

Player information will be updated to reflect new names/guilds/servers.

Artifacts

New servers will allow two of the same artifacts.

Server Transfers

Free server transfers from the surviving server (Druzzil Ro) will not be available in connection with this server merge.

~ Sony Online Entertainment