Wow, that was a blast. Finally the non-pvp lands we call Freedom Isles (or simply Freedom) are available!
The launch was scheduled for 18.00 hrs CET. At about 20.00 hrs things were rolling along pretty nicely.
Around lunch time I decided that it would be good to update the client code certificate, which expired the night until yesterday. Replacing the certificate in all the files involved in the client turned out to be a hassle, and for a while I was wondering if I’d ever get a client up and running again. An hour before launch it was all sorted out though, even if some players still received the old files for some reason. I still had to code and test some of the features by then that I had planned to sort out nice and methodically during the afternoon.
Bugs that we discovered when it was time for launch:
Only the portals from the Golden Valley server worked. So only the people who sailed with their boats made it across.  (Fixed)
If you died you couldn’t log on again since there was no spawn points on Freedom servers. (Fixed)
Kingdom chat was sort of bugged. (Being fixed today)
Some players reported that they got stuck on the border when sailing to change server. (Fixed)
Max ore quality was still limited. (Being fixed today)
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Of course the website was down largely during the process because everyone was downloading the new client files.
Now everything is working nicely. The new server shows almost no lag with 230 simultaneous players.
So all in all: despite the usual two-three hour delay I have to declare this to be a success. I am tired and will go home early to enjoy a nice midsummer celebration. Next week I expect to do some interesting non-panic development involving religion:)
