CCP responds to rumour of server merger with EVE China
Back in 2006, CCP Games decided to move EVE Online into the Chinese MMO market. To comply with China's strict laws regarding online gaming, a second server named Serenity was created. Although the game itself is the same, Serenity doesn't really interact with EVE's main game server. The people over at mmosite today reported that CCP Games had announced plans to merge the two servers. They pointed to a talk given by CCP's CEO Hilmar Petursson at the recent Chinese Game Developers Conference, asserting that Hilmar discussed the company's plans to "connect the Chinese server of EVE Online with its world server."
This news came as a bit of a shock, as the Chinese gaming laws which necessitated a separate game server are still in place. We contacted CCP for more information, who promptly informed us that they are not planning to merge the two servers, and that the writer at mmosite had likely misunderstood what Hilmar said during his talk. Hilmar issued us with the following statement:
"Ever since the Chinese version of EVE Online was announced at EVE Fanfest 2005 then CCP has consistently stated that according to CCP's design philosophy and single shard one world strategy then it would make sense to merge the two servers at some point in the future. Currently this is not possible, for various reasons and we have no current plans to do this merger as a results of those reasons. We will continue to communicate our vision and aspirations regardless."
