On the topic of "Server Maintenance":
I don't understand why some effort isn't put into shortening maintenance.
Setup 2 servers, A which is playing and B on standby.
At Maintenance time, do maintenance on B
then shut down A.
Start up B.
Maintenance then would only need to be a minute or two. Oh sure it might take a bit of coding and a bit of hardware. But it would do away with that annoying one hour interruption that impacts west coast players (me) and Australian players, and probably some of the early morning Russian players too.
At end of next day, reverse the process.
Sure the servers could be more complex than this, or there could be a cluster of servers, but the principle outlined above should still be applicable.