Its up!!!!!

[Xaimera]

I haven't ordered HW.

I downloaded a patch, went into the Config and set DirectX11 to On, and now I have a message that says "The game is unavailable for play during maintenance. There is also a greyed-out button that says "Play" with "DirectX 11" underneath.

Is that all I need to do to be able to log in when the servers are up later?

You should be able to play everything else except the expansion pack areas so should be fine to log in and do everything else .