Just to clarify, there are no technical differences than the existing shards. Everything runs the same codebase. Outside of that, the only difference is that some characters (along with SGs memberships and bases) from when it was operating as its own separate server on it's own infrastructure have been migrated in. Those that were migrated, opt in to do so.
The merger of Victory was announced at the time of the Licensing agreement. It just took us a while to complete the merger.