All Game and Websites down 1am-3am 11-16

As a part of our ongoing efforts to alleviate the connection problems and latency troubles that everyone has been experiencing to some degree; we will be having a complete maintenance Tuesday Morning November 16th from 1am - 3am.

During this maintenance all website, forums, and games will be inaccessible.

The reason this maintenance is occuring now, is we have been performing extensive testing and optimizations to our network. During the network optimization on November 15, it was discovered that there is a likely problem with our Fiber Optic connection from our ISP to us. Briefly Fiber Optic shoots light rather than electricity down the line, and the light is the data between the 2 connections. Normally the light is very bright (when you look at its "beacon"), however when the light is dim it could mean the line or the fasteners have a flaw or damage in them. It was noticed during the thorough checking over this afternoon that our connection light is suspiciously dimmer than optimal (not under the minimum necessary to function though). If the transmission is weaker than optimal it can cause packet loss, which for web traffic is fine, but for game traffic it causes latency.

To thoroughly check the line and connections it must be completely disconnected and run through a battery of tests that our ISP technicians will need to perform. This tests will take 1-2 hours to complete, and during those tests the lines and connections will be swapped with known good connections. If the problem is local to the Techs that should fix the problem. However it is possible the problem is further up the optical line, meaning further detective work will need to be performed by our ISP and us. This set of tests must be performed first before any sort of further action would be possible, and it also carries a moderate chance of fixing at least one of the problems right then; this is why we are opting for a morning time black out to facilitate this fixing to expedite the end of the problems.

I know that many of you are eagerly hoping for a expedited fix to the problems, we are working towards that goal as well. Thank you for support and understanding while these events are being sorted out.