Other than a few of the very early MMOs (like EQ1 in the early years), I have rarely seen an MMO that takes so long to patch even a major release.

I also don’t understand why forums need to be down while the game servers are being patched, except of course that the company doesn’t want to deal with the barrage of angry posts about the servers being down and the patching taking so long. My take on that? Deal with it, cos we’re all posting anyway on hundreds of other forums, often the ones most people find out about new MMOs from.

If they really wanted to do it right, they would make the next client patch include the ability to download the one after in the background while playing, so that everyone has the client ready to go long before the server patch. Then, when the time comes to patch the servers, they can concentrate on making it go fast so that players can get back in the game faster, preferably before they find something else to play.