I'm just thinking here and could be 1000000000000% wrong but here's my cogitations on the matter.
HTC had 2 servers with savvis, 1 for MA and 1 for all other arenas. They removed the MA server from savvis and are shipping it to AT&T to install. While that is happening all other and 'functioning' arenas were shifted to the remaining one at savvis. That's why the number limit has ben lowered and also why you can't ping to .39 anymore, pings to .38 will still register. Once the AT&T server is up and running, most likely at reduced capacity or set up like the present server at savvis is with all arenas on it, then the lone server at savvis will be removed and shifted to AT&T's location. We will then get new server IP numbers for the arenas for pinging and tracing.
I'm a net marOOn so this is just my guessing and as initially stated could be completely wrong.