I got the clue, but as you also noted that it would be possible only if the user received initial merit airdrop. I have had about the merit airdrop, when it happened, did it also come with the expected smerits? Like I you are airdropped 200 merits, will you automatically have 100 smerits? If no, it means it cannot farm the merit.
No. When the merit system was kicked off, merit and smerit distributions are different. It does not work with the ratio of 1 merit : 0.5 smerit like we see per rules of the
merit system. Please see the formula given by theymos
The exact formula was:
yearActivity = activity in the last ~year, max 378
freeMerit = the merit (not sMerit) you started with
modifier =
0.1 if member
0.2 if full member
0.25 if sr member
0.35 if hero
0.4 if legendary
return (yearActivity/378) * modifier * freeMerit
So the most you could get is if you were a Legendary who maxed out your activity points in the last year, in which case you would get 1 * 0.4 * 1000 = 400 sMerit.
Note that I later made an adjustment giving 500 extra merit to some hero members, but no extra sMerit was given here.
I'll probably publish a dump of the initial sMerit at some point.