I have not logged in for a while and a couple of days ago i patched the game up to date. The problem is whenever i try to log in now i get the message "unable to connect to server: server down"

Is the server really down? I checked the server status thread and there is nothng mentioned there?

I can get thru thr first user name and password bit to patch the game but once the launch screen pops up and i enter my password again i either get what i said above or it just thinks about it for a minute then clears the password box again.