Alright, I know many of you are itching to get back into the game, however unfortunately not everything plays out the way you want it to!
Reasons for the downtime are:
1) Massive amounts of work. (You tried looking after 7 kids and 2 teenagers?)
2) My Internet speed was reduced to 64kbps down and 64kbps upload, this might not matter for those who are using the PIPE or WAIAX networks in Australia which is free data and are at full speed no matter what, but the rest of the game was severely bandwidth bottle necked.
My download limits are 15gb on-peak which starts at 10am and finished at 2am and 25gb of off-peak data which goes from 2am to 10am, luckily this ISP doesn't include upload data in the download limit...
However I applied for a larger download limit of 25gb of on-peak data which starts from 10am in the morning and finished at 2am at night, and 45gb of off-peak data which starts at 2am at night and finished at 10am in the morning, this is the LARGEST amount of downloads I can get, and is also stupidly expensive. ($140 a month). - Unfortunately it doesn't take effect till march.
Luckily I am able to still play on Xbox Live! Because my ISP has a special "Relationship" with Microsoft which gives me full speed on the Xbox Live! Networks and doesn't add to my download limits. (Wooot!)
Now players are usually most active from 10pm at Night till 2pm the next day, so that's a large portion that the 45gb quota will handle, and hopefully we wont get any more large amounts of downtime because of the stupid state of broadband in Australia.
*****
This does come with an up-side however.
I have been able to do some work on the game and have added some additional techniques, which will become known to you when you start playing the game once again.
I apologies for the inconvenience! And see you in about 2 to 3 days!