Ocean merge

Starting in January 2012, the ocean merge turned six oceans in the Puzzle Pirates world into three.

On January 31, 2012, both subscriber oceans, Midnight and Cobalt, merged into one subscriber ocean, Cerulean. Doubloon oceans Viridian and Malachite merged into one doubloon ocean, Meridian, while doubloon oceans Sage and Hunter, merged into doubloon ocean Emerald.

The merger affected all extant English-language oceans. The Jade and Opal oceans remain unaffected by the merge and still open to all pirates in their respective languages.

Effects
The maps of each ocean were stitched together, side-by-side. One of each pair of oceans is designated "West" and the other is designated "East".

Two long and difficult inter-archipelago routes connect each pair of ocean maps.

Namespace collisions
Pirates, crews, and flags may have been renamed with the suffix "-West" or "-East" if the same name existed on both merged oceans. The older object kept an unadorned name, unless it is dormant. However, a pirate must have been dormant for two or more years before meeting this exception.

History

 * The mergers of the English-language oceans were hinted at on December 7, 2011, when the "Intrepid Explorer" Velasco Thorsson posted his journals on the "Hear Ye! Announcements" forum. The mergers were subsequently announced the next day by Hermes. On the same day, voting on the new oceans' names opened to the general public, who voted on the name "Cerulean" for the new subscription ocean, "Emerald" for the Sage/Hunter merger, and "Meridian" for the Viridian/Malachite merger.
 * Cerulean was the first ocean to be tested, opened on January 4, 2012.
 * Meridian and then Emerald were the next oceans to be tested in turn.
 * The old oceans were shut down on the morning January 31, 2012, and the newly merged oceans were opened a few hours later. Several bug-fix updates and reboots were necessary after this.