1) You do not restart in the middle of the day, unless
   a) it fixes something that might potentially break the game - eg critical update - or
   b) it has been announced at least 24 hours in advance

Why? Because at the moment it is impossible to really plan ahead with the server admin having the tendency to announce DT 35!! freaking minutes in advance.
Why? Because if you cannot plan at least a day ahead and do the patches in batches, then you probably picked the wrong profession and should hire someone who can.

2) You do not use message boxes like the way you do right now.
   a) It is broken and if one is open, another one will not be opened, leaving you with just one notification that might be just as misleading to someone who comes back from being AFK as it is helpful to someone who is at the PC when it happens.
   b) In addition to (A) relative time is extremely useless compared to giving an absolute one, like restart at 13:00GMT.
   c) Constantly poppint up popups is annoying and not helpful at all. The person who was not at his PC will not get these because of bug (a) anyway, and those who saw the first one will just get pissed by the additional distraction.
   d) Message boxes are a sloppy and lazy design choice. They are an important tool for notification, but quickly lose their significance, when you abuse them for 'hi mom' like messages. You use message boxes for way too many things.
   e) If you insist on having a countdown, then effin code one.. its not that hard, especially since you already have the pointless yellow text in the center of the screen feature, move that text to some corner, give it a more noticeable color (like red) and have it count down.
   f) and for effs sake, stop posting the 'hi mom' style 'personal' messages. Especially in popups. This isnt some 15y/o kiddo's CS server. Whoever thinks its a nice touch, hes wrong. Those popups are annoying enough when they convey something at least semi-important. The last thing i want is pleasantries from developers.

3) What is with logging back in 10 minutes before a DT? Why not? What if it is important to me that i can log in to a diff character of mine, or get dropped while going home? I think you should forget about that restriction ASAP. I can see how with the current notification mechanism, newly logged in players might not be aware of the fact that a restart is imminent (even though you tent to send a popup about that every minute or so for the last five minutes, so only a blind person can miss it), but that only means that your notification mechanisms are fauly by design and that you should try to improve those.

Last, but not least, here is a fine example of how things roll atm:
[14:04:14] <Peach> oh yea.. server down in 7 minutes
[14:04:23] <Peach> could we get another warning at 6.40 as well please?
[14:04:32] <Peach> then one every 5 seconds preferably, so we do not forget about it
(clear sarcasm there, yet, lo and behold a warning about server going down in 6:40 a few seconds after my line in that chat. Suffice to say, they werent even accurate, as more than 20 seconds have passed, but hey.. who cares about time.. it is for losers)

Some might say, they were funny and it is good to have such a direct bunch of devs. I would even say they are right in a sense. It is better to have devs that listen and can be talked to, than devs that only see you as the database records you are.

HOWEVER, and this is important. There is a fine line between being cool, being funny and being annoying. perp devs are borderlining between funny and annoying in my eyes right now and quite frankly, none of those two are all that good of an opinion when you think about it. If i wanna see clowns, i go to a circus. I do not need to play an MMO for that. When i play an MMO, i wanna see competent, caring and responsible developers, that do not abuse even such trivial systems as in-game message boxes for personal or community entertainment.