2 issues have been addressed today with speed. At approximately 5 or 6 am EST every day the game would slow to a crawl for a while. This was due to the daily backup. The method of backing the data up has changed and will no longer take nearly as long.
I've also changed the method of expiring enchantmetns. This will have no visible effect on them, but the check for them had begun taking way too much time due to the prevailance of magic in our world. The new checks are quite a bit more optimized, but still just as efficient.