Well, the Tourney Server is up and running.
http://tourney.aatraders.com
You can sign-up as a new player but you can't play yet. So head on over and sign-up in the game so everyone knows who is going to be playing.
Some of the rules and changes...
1. Once the game starts no new players will be allowed.
2. There will be only two teams and everyone will be on one of those teams.
3. There are NO BOUNTIES. Any player can attack any other player or planet irrespective of their rank. So be careful of the big guys when they appear.
4. There are 1000 unowned planets. Of those 1000 planets 500 of them are Independant. These independant planets are all based, have unique names, a random number of colonists, random number of fighters, random number of torpedos, random tech levels between 1-20 and 30% credit production. So there are some ripe planets for people to attack and take control of right off the bat.
Be sure to check the settings on the game for everything else.