There is a scheduled maintenance on November 5, 2009 for Free Realms. The maintenance is expected to start "around 3PM PDT" today, and may last as long as four hours.

This update will usher in the new Job Sampling system that was announced earlier this week, and is the main focus of the update.

Earlier today, Laralyn McWilliams, Creative Director of Free Realms, released an article about the upcoming November and December updates. It details many changes and additions that will roll out into the game, most of which is based upon player feedback.

Some of the upcoming content will include housing, a variety of new pets, sweeping changes to the job availablity for free-to-play accounts and an announcement of a fishing minigame. Players will get more UI options for customization and steamlining, as well as the ability to toggle on and off features such as duels or friend requests. A few of the upcoming 2010 features were announced, such as an auction house and item dyes.

Make sure you read about all of the exciting changes in full and get ready to experience a whole new Free Realms!

As the nights grow longer and the weather becomes chill, it is a stark reminder that the night of ghosts and ghoulies is upon us. Tomorrow will be the start of November, which will swiftly bring the end to the Super Spooktacular celebrations in Free Realms.

According to SOE's official news post, Super Spooktacular is scheduled to end on November 11, 2009. It is stated that at that time, all of the Halloween specific items and costumes will be removed from the Marketplace. Now is the time to act if you've still been waiting to purchase something special! The limited edition Werewolf Outfit is also still available, until the limit is met or time runs out, to those who are interested.

We at ZAM wish everyone a safe and happy Halloween, and may your bags of candy be filled to the brim!

For most places here in the States Daylight Savings Time ends Sunday at 2:00 a.m.  Remember to set your clocks back!  For those of you not using Daylight Savings Time, this means that most U.S. game companies will be operating one hour LATER than they do in the summer. 

Here's a handy Time Zone Converter to help you plan for downtime and such.

Several of the Free Realms servers have been having instability issues since the hardware updates this morning. Due to these issues, another maintenance is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 9:30AM PDT, and is expected to last about one hour.

You can read the official announcement here.

UPDATE: All Free Realms servers are back online as of 11:20AM PDT.