The initial Merit Airdrop gave each account the number of merits that was set as a requirement from then on. So for example, a Member receives 10 merits as a baseline, a Full Member 100, a Sr. Member 250, a Hero 500, and a Legendary 1000. Nevertheless, some Hero Members (with a large activity I presume) were given an airdrop of 1000 merits instead of 500 (See sMerit for every rank?).

Don’t get confused between merit and sMerit. @Theymo’s posts is about sMerit, but he indicates this in relation to the above merit exception for Heroes:

(@theymos)