We've run into the same symptom again with a different problem. We are working on fixing it again but regrettably every time this happens we have to restart and wipe the databases to prevent them getting into bad or corrupted states. We'll have a fix out as soon as we can! Thank you once again and more updates will follow as we learn more.
While our backend engineers and server administrators are hard at work fixing the problem we just wanted to put a message out there to thank them so much for everything they're doing. They have been tasked with a nearly impossible feat and have been up all night now into the morning. Their resilience and commitment to ensuring the realm is stable and provides the best experience for the players is nothing short of admirable. We couldn't ask for a better team! Thank you very much and please keep sending them your support!
The problem we ran into was due to adding more database shards in the last minute to try to support the massive player numbers. Unfortunately there was an issue which caused multiple characters to have the same character id. Thankfully the problem has now been found and is being fixed at this very moment. Your ongoing patience and support is hugely appreciated and we will continue to provide updates as we learn more.
Another update, we've found a last minute crash that would have affected a majority of users that we have now fixed and is being deployed, once that's out we will be doing our final checks then opening access. If there are any further updates we will let you know immediately, once again thank you very much for your patience, we're almost there!
We've deployed the new database configuration and are working on getting everything back up and running. Our current time estimates should have access opening within the next half hour. Thanks again for your support, we'll continue to provide updates as they come.