I left open the IRC as a way to get updates instead of F5'ing. Rob Balder made a brief appearance (which I was paying attention during) and stated the following:
[23:21] <~RobTitan> Sheesh 57 people in here?
[23:21] <toma> there is always a lot of inactives
[23:21] <~RobTitan> Man. Nothing went right today
[23:21] <Reticle_of_watchful_Oversight> is traffic really that terrible, Rob?
[23:21] <~RobTitan> Harknell isn't sure
[23:22] <~RobTitan> Harknell says there's pretty good evidence it's a DDoS attack
[23:22] <~RobTitan> But the timing is suspicious.
[23:23] <Mors> Rob obviously Erfworld finally has the massive following it deserves don't view this any other way.
[23:26] <QuinDraco> So Rob, any chance of an early update via Rapidshare or similar? *looks hopeful*
[23:27] <Sgeo> For those with no Facebook access: http://twitter.com/erfworld
[23:27] <~RobTitan> But sometimes people just plant ideas, you know?
[23:28] <QuinDraco> Hey, you guys actually think it's a DDoS? I thought it was just launch day shenanigans.
[23:28] <~RobTitan> QuinDraco, Harknell thinks so.
[23:29] <President_Allosaurus> By who? Why?
[23:29] <~RobTitan> Starting 11 am we pegged the processor with stuff that looks like bot activity
[23:29] <~RobTitan> These things are often not personal, just feeling out for exploits.
[23:29] <toma> okay, thanks for explaining
[23:29] <Telva> Stupid bots.
[23:30] <Mors> Zombies
[23:30] <Joefalco> Bots have programmed emotions too, y'know.
[23:30] <~RobTitan> Linode does nothing to detect and ban ranges of IPs
[23:30] <~RobTitan> But the new host will.
[23:30] <Firemouse> awesome, as you get larger that kind of setup will become more critical
[23:31] <~RobTitan> Additionally the new machine is many times the power, in processor and memory. Turns out to be less than double the cost, too.
[23:31] <QuinDraco> IP banning always struck me as odd, what with dynamic ip addressing and proxying. Not that I have a better idea.
[23:31] <Firemouse> ip baning can halt a current attack giving time to lock down
[23:33] <kefkakrazy> That.... sucks. DDoS on Book 2 launchday?
[23:33] <kefkakrazy> Well, I took advantage of one of the server uptimes to sign up as a Tool, so that's fun.
[23:33] <Sgeo> It's definitely an attack?
[23:33] <kefkakrazy> They were suggesting it might be
[23:33] <~RobTitan> Okay I don't know that it's specifically banning. I am doing my nontechnical, utterly disinterested in the subject, layman's interpretation of what Harknell told me.
[23:34] <QuinDraco> It's likely banning. That would make sense.
[23:34] <Firemouse> usually for webpages it's called Filtering, but thats semantics
[23:35] <~RobTitan> I care that the new host will proactively attempt to protect us from this ****.
[23:35] <Mors> I still remain certain that somehow Higgins is responsible.
So, its likely to be an attack, which just so happened to occur on launch.