DDO: Patch Scheduled and Risia Update

Turbine announced the date of an upcoming patch to Dungeons and Dragons Online: "The DDO Game Servers will be brought down on Wednesday, December 10th from 7:00 - 11:00 AM Eastern (-5 GMT) for an update to the game. Release notes for the update will be available soon."

They also announced some information about the preview server, Risia:

The decision was recently made to close Risia to the public in the coming weeks to prepare it for use in an upcoming DDO project (you may have heard us allude to something big coming down the pipe!). However, Murphy's Law of MMOs bit us with a hardware failure on Risia on Monday during our regular maintenance. Since the closure was already fast approaching, we re-evaluated our plans and have decided to leave Risia closed for the immediate future. We know this will generate many questions, so we've tried to answer a few of them in advance. We'd like to thank everyone for their participation in the preview program! Please stay tuned for more announcements:

Q: What do I do with my Risia installation?
A: You can uninstall the Risia client and delete any installation files. New preview server installations will be incompatible with the current Risia installation.

Q: Does this mean there won't be a preview program any more?
A: The preview program has been undergoing some changes based on play patterns. The active population on our preview servers tends to be very small between updates. Activity picks up when a new Module becomes available, and then quickly dies back down. We'll have more information about the preview program in the future.

Q: Can I transfer my characters from Risia to the live servers?
A: Unfortunately, preview characters are not eligible to be transferred. Risia characters are not up to date with the Live servers.

Q: So... this "DDO related project". Can you tell me what it is? Is it super secret stuff?
A: We can't tell you just yet, but the wait to find out about it won't be long! More information about the fate of Risia will be available early this coming Year!