We've deployed 1.0.5b and have posted its patch notes here. A copy of the community interview that occurred on the weekend has been posted by its hosts and can be heard here. It's over an hour long and covers a lot of topics!

We've recently finished some technology that will allow us to make serverside updates to Path of Exile without needing downtime. It's likely to be in the 1.0.6 or 1.1.0 patch (after being sufficiently tested). Once this is deployed, we'll be able to hotfix server problems (like bugs or balance issues) in a non-disruptive way. This will probably mean that we deploy small updates more regularly and will be extremely valuable after large patches where it's extremely important to be able to deploy minor fixes quickly and without rebooting all the servers.

I also wanted to clarify that Act 4 is not part of March's 1.1.0 content update. There is a pile of new content, including some new game areas, but an entire Act takes way more than four months to create. While most of the community understand that Acts can take over a year to produce (depending on how much funding we have available), I've been seeing posts where people were confused about the word "expansion" that I used to describe the March update. While we think of it as an expansion because it contains so many different things, it doesn't have the new character class or new act that people seem to expect from the word. Because of this, we've moved away from using that language. What's something called that's a lot larger than a regular content update but smaller than the gigantic update that will introduce Act 4? A mini-expansion? Either way, the March update has its own name and you'll find out information starting in early February :)