So, moujave, H4X, PartyM and I put up the new server today. We all joined it and tested out the functionality.
As the server was public, we were joined by a few budding pioneers and some hopeful grievers who helped us test out the server's currently somewhat limited capabilities.
During the session we managed to code up a few missing things here and there. After a few dozen restarts and 5 hours later, we have a pretty good list of things to finish up before launch.
The current outlook is that we're probably a few more days of development away from a wide scale open launch.