Patching the game client can also be initiated prior to the release going live.
You can now begin patching The Fall of Oriath update!— Path of Exile (@pathofexile) August 4, 2017
Like the original launch, this was one of the smoothest I’ve seen where it looked like everything was A-OK. 1.5 hours later, there was a realm issue requiring them to restart the servers (which didn’t resolve the issue since the realms went down again).
GGG provided an update just 10 minutes later explaining that the two realm crashes were due to high player load.
