As announced recently, Lightbringer and Mazrigos are to be connected .. currently the expected date for this to happen is 23rd July ... ie, our next reset/maintenance day.
Below are a few things you may wish to know about how these work:
- Characters in a Connected Realm are able to send mail to characters on other realms in the Connected Realm.
- Characters in a Connected Realm are able to friend, whisper, and group with characters on other realms in the Connected Realm.
- Characters in a Connected Realm may join a guild on any realm in their Connected Realm.
- All realms in a Connected Realm share a common Auction House.
- All realms in a Connected Realm share a common Trade Chat.
- Custom chat channels also work between Connected Realms.
- Characters on different realms within a Connected Realm may have the same name, as may guilds. Only the name (and guild, if any) is displayed above a character's head, but if a character is on a different realm within the Connected Realm, chats, whispers, and the character's tooltip will show the character's name, followed by a dash ("-") and the name of that character's realm. The same conventions are followed within character tooltips for guild names if the other character is in a guild on a different realm.
- The names of characters in lists such as guild Rosters and Who Lists who are on other realms within a Connected Realm are appended with a dash followed by their realm name. When addressing in-game mail to characters on another realm within a Connected Realm, the recipient character's name must have a dash and the other character's realm name appended.
- The current limit of 11 characters on each individual realm is not affected by Connected Realms. Players are therefore allowed to create 11 characters on each Connected Realm, allowing for an overall total of far more than 11 characters on the combined virtual realm. Players who have already reached the character limit on their own realm may therefore wish to create new characters on a Connected Realm, with negligible difference. This provides new possibilities for players with regard to character limits, and effectively redefines the realm character limit as 11 x number of Connected Realms.
So to summarise, when we are Connected, you keep your character names and guild names. We interact with those from the other realm(s) for all intents and purposes as if we were one realm ... characters from any realm in the connection can be in any guild, party up, chat, use the same Auction Houses.
In effect, we are getting roughly double the population AND double the number of character slots, all in one place. Any characters you have on either Lightbringer OR Mazrigos are able to join either of our guilds (Light or Dark Wolves) and interact as if we were all on the same realm. You just have to remember that, if you're sending mail or an invite to someone, you put the correct "realm" after the name, or you might end up with the wrong person!
There have been a few problems with Connections in the past .. most of these are minor and are easily sorted, but it is worth keeping in mind:
- Your avatar and character information on the Armories may take several weeks to update after the connection.
- There is a possibility that anything you hold in your mailbox may "disappear" after the connection (if this does happen, simply raise a ticket or wait a while .. apparently eventually the mail usually turns back up)
- You lose any raid lockouts ... for us in particular, this means that the boss we're locked to in Siege of Orgrimmar will be cleared .. if we want to get to challenge that boss again, on Normal, we will have to kill all the preceding bosses again first.
- In the early days there were reports of guild ranks and guild vault access being mucked up .. but I think this is sorted now.
If anyone else knows of any other problems, or have any questions, please feel free to ask 
