Does anyone know what happened to the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS)(freechess.org)? It has been offline for almost a week! I hope it did not go out of business. 
I just logged on to play using the Babachess client with no problem. I also played several times last week and as recently as Sunday with no problems. However, I just tried to get the freechess.org home page to load in my browser and get a page load error. Maybe there is a problem with the website but not with the server.
Apparently, it was down for a day or two due to a server crash. I heard they restored it, but I think they’re still bringing things up and down as they replace hardware along the way.
For several days I had to log in as a guest. After I had logged in, I could disconnect and then reconnect as me, so I don’t know what was wrong.
It seemed like a good time to try the free membership on WCL for USCF members.
I couldn’t log in for like 1 day, or maybe even just half a day, the other day.
Otherwise, I’ve been playing pretty steady almost every day. (Or at least logging on and chatting, reading messages, etc).
I cannot get in at freechess.org
But can through Thief software
FICS is updating thier web server. But not the play server. So programs that bypass the web server (pretty much all but java programs) will be able to log on.
I haven’t been on FICS in quite a while, but I did get the idea to give WCL a try…and I’m glad that I did. It is very nice and almost identical to ICC in most respects. I’ve been following the Linares tournament there and have really enjoyed watching the best players duke it out. I should have signed up for WCL a long time ago.
FICS is up an running fine, I just won a game(unrated) there “Yeah”.
Thanks for the help guys! FICS is back to normal now. ICC is fun too, but the Kamsky-Topalov match was disappointing for the Kamsky fans (like me!) .