So it seems that today, January 16th 2018, Team17 has created a new WormNET server. When you connect to WormNET, you may notice that there are only a few people and no bots (except ChanServ) - this may mean you're on the new server. The IP suggests it is now hosted in the Amazon Cloud, and when you try to open the main page with your browser, you get "New WormNET1". So I guess they're serious about what they're doing.
What this means is that eventually, the old UK server that has served us for so long, will shut down (we don't know when, could be as early as this week). Because DNS updates can take a while (around 12 hours), not everyone connects to the new server still; many people are on the old server, including all bots.
The move also has its problems. It seems that the new WormNET server no longer supports spaces in game names. So all HB games end up broken in the game list (because they use at least one space). If this is due to the server using UTF-8, then this is valid for any character after latin ones (e.g. diacritical + cyrillic) -- not confirmed yet.
If you're stuck on the new server with a snooper, you can use "212.110.191.17" or "wormnet.team17.com" as the server address to force connection to the old one. (Edit: this didn't seem to work, unless you use the IP and purely for IRC) Can also try "ipconfig /flushdns" in the command line.
Update: it seems that right now, Team17 has rolled back the DNS change. You should be connecting to the old server again, but some people are stuck on the new server until their DNS flushes. We also don't know when Team17 decides to do the change again, so pay attention.
Update 2: (15:54 GMT) Less than an hour since the last update, they seem to have updated the DNS record again to the new server. So people will again be connecting to the new server. This may cause a disturbance in the functioning of WormNET bots. HB is already broken. We've contacted Team17 and doing everything we can from our end
Update 3 (16:14 GMT): (see CyberShadow's reply below) It seems that the discrepancies in the distribution of the old and new server IPs are caused by an error with the two Team17's nameservers, which return conflicting results. This is bad, because this means WormNET will be in a turmoil in the meantime. You will randomly be connected either to the old or the new server throughout the day. We're trying to establish contact with Team17 still.
Update 4 (16:51 GMT): Team17 have now updated their nameservers, so the discrepancy problem should be gone for now (it uses the old server right now). We're good for now.
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