So... how does Early Access work with physical pre-orders?

[Snugglebutt]

I suspect that the servers will go down for maintenance for probably the week of the release and come up early for the early access people.

I doubt that will happen unless SE makes the month in which gets released a subscription free month for everyone. No one I know would be happy that they paid for a month subscription and lost an entire week for a maintenance just because some people bought the expansion early. If they did take it down for week I would demand they gave me back my subscription fee for that month given I plan to buy the expansion though maybe not pre-order on top of paying possible subscription fee for that period, it would piss me off big time if those who paid the same amount as myself caused me to lose out on an entire weeks paid for game time just because they paid earlier.