Why should SE deal with significant expenses to prepare for 1 week? It makes little sense from their end. Anyone who likes the game enough to pay a continuous subscription fee voluntarily will deal with a temporary annoyance and move on. People who don't like the game enough to put up with something like this for a few days are not the people who would have kept paying a subscription fee for months and years to come, by and large. And those folks have already bought the base game, so SE's got about as much cash as it's going to from them.

I get it. I'm as annoyed at being unable to get on as you all are, and I'd love if we had super-awesome-amazing servers that could handle any load or DDOS without going down. But really. This nonsense will fix itself up fast, and in a month no one will remember or care. Go out and watch a movie. Go to the pool. Remember that pet you bought? Go see if s/he's still alive. We'll live just fine without our e-crack for a short while, I promise.