The work on the Hive is going well, but we've run into a few snags. Right now we're looking at prospectively doing a "test server" release on Friday, and if that fails, then probably Monday. By "test server" I mean that we will be testing the hive on a separate game server. There's simply been too much new code and subsystems added to the game for us to risk hurting the production universe, or seriously breaking things. Instead, we're going to open up access to our internal development server and let people connect to it. After some tweaking and testing, we'll potentially roll out the Hive in the production universe late next week.

The development server runs from a snapshot of the production database, which we will bring up to date for this purpose. Thus, anyone with a currently active account will be able to play, but character progression in the "test" universe will not be reflected in the production database. The Test server will only be accessible for a short period of time, while we test the new features and prepare for the production launch. For anyone who wishes to take part on this, watch the General forum on the messageboard for more information. I will post instructions for how to connect when we get the Hive to the point where it's ready for testing. You will be able to use your normal game client to connect.

Thanks for your patience, as always, and stay tuned for more about the Hive launch.