We just had a full continent alert on Indar and the servers held up fine. This game actually has really solid server support, it handles a huge number of players as well/better than any other I can think of, especially over the last few months when they increased the rendering distances in congested areas.
When they did that relevancy radius change, the next free weekend killed the servers so hard that they had to do another one two weeks later after some fixes…that still killed the servers pretty hard. The Magburner is supposed to give you one second of boost, but the server’s tick rate was slowed down so much that I managed to boost all the way from Indar Excavation to Quartz Ridge, about a minute’s travel time, before the server finally told me I had to knock it off 
But yeah, I have to agree, even after the merge and lattice concentration of players, the server seems to be holding up just fine. I’m not so thrilled about getting Helios’ big Chinese NC outfit to go with Connery’s big Chinese TR faction with their suspicously-conveniently-terrible connections, but eh. The fighting is pretty killer so far, exactly the large scale stuff I love the game for.
As for the other patch changes, from a Vanu POV, I’m torn. The Saron change is not just a nerf, but kind of a screw-you as well…but the new MAX Overdrive is awesomely fun. I glow pink & white, shoot neon tracers, have heat shimmer cascading off my weapons and move around, kill, and die really fast. I’m not convinced yet that it’s really all that combat-effective, overall, but it’s COOL AS HELL and is thus is the perfect Vanu ability. OVERDRIVE! Plus, the schadenfreude of having NC maxes run away from me is so very, very delicious.
I am not sure about the lattice system yet. I guess I see where they are going with it, but just seems like arbitrary and needless complexity. We are bound by the supply lines but have no control over them.
Here is a radical idea: What if there was no respawn outside the warpgates? You would have to get to your destination by vehicle or droppods which are only enabled every so often. That would stop the spawn room camping which seems to consume over 50% of my game time.
I can’t wait to get back from vacation and give this a go, hopefully Sunday night. Anyone else planning on being on?
Did a couple more of the time lapse videos. This one is short and just shows an example of one of the new giant lattice battles and this one is an attack and defense of a base through the night and day.
Double XP weekend until the 7th, and a 40% reduction in SC prices on the 4th. If you want to give it a go, add me on steam and play with us soon.
I had the pleasure of getting killed by SenorBeef and his goddamn Harasser last night. It was like meeting a celebrity by chance.
[My Lightning gets blown up]
PS2 screen: “You were killed by [SDMB] SenorBeef”
Me: “Oh my god, I know that guy from his SDMB PS2 thread!”
Too bad that I don’t yet know how to type chat stuff to specific people or people in proximity. 
Otherwise I would have said “Hi” and shook my fist.
I am indeed a celebrity. You joined the wrong faction.
We’ve been running harassers non-stop for about a week when we discovered how they’re the greatest thing ever. Example vid
I forgot I told someone I was going to post this video. We’ve been having a blast making crazy 3 man harasser runs. I’ve now spent like 4000 certs and 3000sc on maxing mine out.