Owing to some serious problems with names and server merges, the Aion team has delayed these merges to July 14th

That's right folks, server merges will be delayed by about a week due to a serious problem with same-name conflicts of characters on merged servers. Pikko once wrote a touching tale of how Final Fantasy XI players were forced to change their names because the server they were being merged onto already had a character with that same name. What really made people angry, however, was the fact that some of these "original" characters were inactive, and had been so for many years, but they still retained the "right" to the original name.

Well, it seems as though this time around the Aion team is planning to try to nip this problem in the bud by changing... everyone's name! It's unfortunate, but this may very well be the best way to avoid grief from all players, as the Aion Team has announced that on the day of the server merges, everyone will have their server letters imprinted onto the end of their name (so I would be PwyffSI for Pwyff of Siel, I suppose!). Following this, all players on all servers will then receive a free name change ticket, so for those of you who are really gunning to get your name back, you simply need to be the first to change your name back, and voila! This ultimately prevents players from hogging all the good names with level 1 alts, and it effectively frees up lots of names that inactive players took over, but be sure to remember July 14th, because if you want a particuarly popular name, it's first come, first served!