it will probably not work for today but should work tomorrow.
usually its only down because:
1. Theyre updating it
2. Its just not working
3. Theyre being hacked
I think I've got it! If you remember the last time this happened it was because there was a hack where you could login as anyone you wanted to. What if the hack got past all the patches that were made and they had to shut it down again.
Good to see that after years of development and paying for a game that is supposedly past it's beta stages, they still can't get reliable servers to handle all the players that use Minecraft.
usually its only down because:
1. Theyre updating it
2. Its just not working
3. Theyre being hacked
i hope it works soon.
Edit- nvm it works yay!
Edit2- its not working again
Guess I'll go play something else since I can't get online to continue working/testing/building my server =(
Minecraft multiplayer sessions was down earlier and was the cause of the failed login error.
Because it keeps restarting then players flood it with requests and it goes down again.
that could be done by setting the server settings to online-mode = false which is very risky if open to the world
Offline mode with a plugin that deals with authentication most likely.
http://xpaw.ru/mcstatus/