sorry alley I read the announcement and the replies. I don't see anything about not playing offline. Don't worry about it though. My God you have enough going on.
you can close the updater before it times out and it will open the launcher. you can close it by either right clicking it on the taskbar or by alt-f4ing it. if you know the server ip then you can add it to your optional arguments. like -s67.241.91.122:2302 for instance. thats the workaround we have been using. and you can still play on one of the other servers running 4.88. You can find the other disco servers on http://flserver.de/topservers.php?timeframe=year or you can add no server and play offline.