Fooli has answered this mostly but i think its worth further emphasising a couple of points..
The recent downtime of the gal and general lagginess on biplaneworld following the press announcement were both fairly minor issues which can be/have been resolved easily enuf. (Not that there wont be other new 'minor issues' in the future
With all this part-time coding and permanent 'beta'ing its a common part of the game unfortunately).
Except when dealing with large file transfers, the servers themselves arent being particularly stressed bandwidth-wise atm, even on a home user cable connection. Redirecting some file transfers away from the server to a website url is a plan for the near future, and then id expect any home connection to be able to handle at least 50+ players without noticeable lag for the host.
Universal server(s) aren't up to scratch with the games requirements. Often MMOG's are hit with this problem, and thus the reason they revert to charging users
Working in a large game company's online team means I am very aware of this (its scary the sortof money involved in hosting any commercial game :] - and its the reason almost none of em make any money at all) and avoiding this issue is fundamental to the design of the game.
Its not just free because we jus happen not to have got to the point where we decide we have to charge to play it, its free to play coz its designed that way.
which i reckon is a good thing
