So today I will talk about server merges and how it effects players (not f2p mind you,players that pay occasionally and are not * p2w), I will take my own situation as an example. So before our server was merged its was well 90% inactive but it was really really beneficial for all kinds of players, the lower power players were getting like 40-50 seals pwer month and everyone was getting all kinds of good rewards due to low competition even among the p2w if you landed on the p2w side in sage world you had a good chance of getting 10 advanced refines etc. plundering was almost non-existant and those that did plunder soon stopped because they didn't want to drive away what little players remained, this kind of setup was very like a symbiotic relationship between the paying players and the f2p even becuase the f2p or semi-f2p were catching up to the paying players which meant more group instance and more group SA etc, there were 2 active groups and both had roughly 10-15 active members and there were talks about forming another group for gnw because there were still alot of clue less players running around without groups. it was good and it got even better when arena and matsuri got cross server (sure it *ed at first but it evened the odds for all p2w and f2p) because now there was no getting you ass kicked in by the same p2w players over and over, I would help lower power players regardless if they were in group or not with ti SA etc everyday, however I felt like the paying players would quit soon as there were no hoards of lower power slaves for them to farm in sage world (thank god sage world is cross server) etc. I can talk on and on but lets go to the second part ''after the merge''
So yeah now I am going to tell you guys what happened after the merge, well after the merge happened everything went to * as there were many groups that were way way higher then our 2 groups (our group was barely 8 and the other group was nearly 9 in rank) but the new groups were way way over powered and we felt like we wouldnt even make it to top 10 once the dust settles in and players form proper groups, alot of the players from my server were freaking out and 1 of them went full on p2w (was 40k something and now he is 60k+), plunder started again and it felt like one of those evil overlords bringing their slaves with them to hunt or something because there were so many lower power players in the other servers then even me, even I could have a good chance at plunder if I chose to do so. alot of player just joined the strongest group (pretty basic as this game has different systems and winning wars don't mean you get the best rewards all the time) our group broke down, I and some others stayed but we couldn't qualify for gnw with the activity rate, So I left too and joined another group that was third strongest but it soon became on par with the first strongest because all the players from our group joined. at first the new group leader was like everyone will get a seal pack every 2 weeks but its been 3 weeks and I havn't got a single seal pack but a fellow group mate got it twice even though we joined at the same time (he has more power then I have), ninetails went to *, you only get like 10 coupons now because the top 20 spots are held by p2w. There is a huge divide between players now in our group only the high power players do group instance, find it a bother to help even lower power group mates with SA hard, there is a shortage of good Ti teams for the 20-30k range power as not many in my group have a similer power to mine.
My power is 35k and I have most of the rares I need, have many good S tier fire teams and a couple of wind teams as well, and to be honest I am at a point where all these drastic changes don't effect me that much but I can't even imagine how it must be for any player that got merged into this * show without any decent rares, I would have quit the game after the merge if not for my fire teams (they keep me afloat in this mess of pvp).
So the point is DON'T ask for merges unless you got like 5 players in the server, I am telling you it's not pretty, and also there is like a prettyyyyy good chance your server will get merged with one that doesn't need a merge, which means your server will suffer more because your servers groups would be under-developed less players etc.