In the last few days I started to work at the random days stuff, on the server.
The basic concept, for those who didn't read the link provided in the journal entry, is simple: Every once in a while (15% chance) when a new ingameday starts (that is, every 6 real hours) there will be a special day, where out of the ordinary things happen.
Example of special days include days when there is a chance of 'instant ressuraction' for both humans and AI players, days when there will be no fighting, harvesting, etc.
Implementing them is relatively easy, and so is the testing. However, there is a problem with the testing, as I would like to keep SOME of those random days a secret, as a surprise. So I guess we will have to test the secret days only with some of the developers, rather than invite all the players to test them on the test server.

As we speak, I am talking with one of the server developers about the fact that we might soon get more than 1k players online, as two magazines (one from Finnland and one from UK) will have EL on their cover CD.
In order to counter this problem, we need to increase the limit of players online from 1K to 1.2K or so. This is easy to do, just change the value of a #define. The problem is, we never tested it before, so although no problems are expected, they can still happen.

Increasing the number slightly will solve the problem for a while, but then another virtual server will become necesary. By virtual server, I mean another EL server hosted on the same machine, but a different port. They will be totally separated from eachother, they will have different users, and there will be no items exchange between the servers.

Finally, there is another thing I had put off for too long, which is writting the 5th part of the El postmortem article. I will start writting it tonight.