Here is what I think will happen tomorrow:
We will get at least one more big patch for the Legacy (2d) client. There will most likely also be another large patch for the new Enhanced client.
The shards will all go down simultaneously and stay down for a 3-8 hour window while they all receive the expansion publish.
During the time the production shards are down, we will probably have access to a Test Center shard.
Tomorrow, I assume we will also be able to use the uogamecodes and eagames sites to purchase our desired quantity of expansion codes and receive them via e-mail. We will then use the Account Management site to apply the expansion code to our account.
Then it will be time to wait patiently, with fingers crossed, while the engineers and developers make sure the publish is running smoothly and without glitches. I'm sure we'll all have our eyes glued to the UOHerald page waiting for updates. Hopefully, while the publish is happening, Chrissay will be posting lots of publish notes and related documentation. Hopefully Petra will also have the go-ahead by then to open to the public the SA information she and others have been compiling for Stratics. I'm sure other fan site administrators will also be waiting in the wings to get the go-ahead to upload their carefully-compiled SA information.
After a few hours, we'll finally get the word that the shards are back up, or people will start seeing them show up on the server list when they try to log in. I expect they'll come back up a few shards at a time and will not be terribly surprised if some shards are a little bit unstable to begin with, depending on when they come back and how many people log onto the same shard simultaneously.
I hope people will be patient tomorrow and prepare themselves to wait just a little bit longer. It's been a long wait to get to this point and I think it won't kill anyone to try to be as gracious as possible over a few additional delays of mere hours. We're all adults or close to being adults and it's always disappointing to see some let their anticipation / excitement get the best of them and make them revert to acting like toddlers.
