New Server Labels on the Launcher and a question.

[BangoTwinkletoes]

When Turbine, the independent company, launched LOTRO, they entered into a separate contractual agreement with Codemasters (similar to what exists today with the Russian servers) whereby Codemasters would implement LOTRO on their own servers using their own technology. It was a licensing deal, pure and simple. There were two separate Game Clients, just as there is today for Bullroarer. NA players could not see, let alone access the EU servers and Vice Versa. However, the Internet being what it is, punched holes in that structure.

When WB bought turbine, they wanted all aspects of the Toliken IP "in-house" -- Plus, the Internet technology had matured sufficiently that European players playing on hardware in North America was a very reasonable thing. The Internet was still in its infancy and traffic volumes much lower than they are today. Until recently, there was not an "Amsterdam" to move the EU servers back to! I have not tracked the explicit dates and times of the Internet expansion since I retired, but the chances have been rocket-propelled! When I retired in 2003, it was NOT feasible to move things back, but those of us in the Internet Backbone community expected that it would only be a matter of time. Today, "The Cloud" is all about that capability. Are you running on hardware located in North Carolina? Colorado? Amsterdam? or ??? you simply do not know... nor care, most of the time. It is all pretty transparent.

Back when Codemasters and Turbine were developing LOTRO, and yes, they were duplicating efforts, Turbine chose one Database solution and Codemasters another.
In the Spring of 2012, Turbine realized that they had "made a bad choice" and needed to upgrade their database. They planned a repair/migration-whatever they called it for the spring of 2012, and wham-bam, promptly fell flat on their face. LOTRO was down for almost 2 weeks because the database upgrade planned for 6 hours, failed miserably. And that was when Turbine was fully staffed working hard on Riders of Rohan!

Today, I have no idea where things stand. From what I have been able to tell, there WERE significant efforts being made via Bullroarer to deal with the Conversion issues -- but then apparently another round of layoffs last year brought that to a screeching halt. Such a conversion effort is extremely labor intensive and when you have a situation where the documentation does not match the "hot-fix" changes... you get Giant Avancs or Toads running amuck in Bree. All because the people who knew about them are now gone. It's called "Loss of Institutional Memory."

Sadly, as players, there is nothing we can do about the issue except sit back, take it on the chin and roll.

I'm not normally picky, but one of the main reasons for outsourcing the EU operation to Codemasters was that it also outsourced any localisation work - so doing the translation of quests etc was Codemaster's responsibility, who interestingly in turn outsourced this to a company called "Partnertrans". The link below is useful background:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...lisation-again

Such a deal would have worked to Turbine's best interests - they did not have to worry about the details of getting a UK-Enlgish, French & German clients and the hassle of providing telephone support etc.

Anyhow, the internet back in 2006 / 2007 was more than robust enough to support trans-Atlantic gaming connections. Also globally-redundant data centres certainly existed - I was working for an organisation back in early 2006 that was looking to outsource it's hosting and this was a commonly-provided facility. In the Uk at least the explosion at the Buncefield Oil Depot had thrown light on the practice of having so many secondary data centres all collocated around an oil terminal.

[Frelorn]

Is there an ETA when you will release concrete information about server-transfers?

The short answer is no. We are not going to jump ahead and tell you things that might or might not work and then have people mad when we find out later that something is not feasible. We have been very open with the information we have and will continue to do so. Our focus right now is making sure that information we give you on this is as accurate as possible and does not cause more confusion than is needed.

When we have more concrete information it will be shared just as we have been sharing what we have now. The goal of the team is ensure the transfer process is a smooth and all encompassing as possible. This means if we have to take more time to get things done before we share what will and will not be available, than so be it. As when we released this information, we will give everyone all the details and plenty of time to digest the information as soon as we can.

This is not a simple process for anyone involved, so please be patient. We will share everything we can, when it is ready to be shared, I promise.

[cdq1958]

Even now, the character copies made to BR are not "completely functional copies". there simply are some things that cannot be "translated" correctly even when transferring to BR from US servers - For Example: All My transferred toons from Dwarrowdelf to BR cannot use the auto-leveling function in the Tavern...why?... probably because somewhere in the code is one of those 1s or 0s that blinds BR's software to the fact that those toons should be allowed to auto-level, & thus the NPCs to do so are never even spawned while playing on those toons, Whereas if I create a toon from scratch on BR, there are no such inabilities to auto-level. Same thing goes for certain other character attributes - things like marks & medallions (sometimes they transfer - other builds they don't) shared storage & wardrobe sometimes get bugged up as well when placing account bound items into them that happened to be in your chars bags at the time of transferring. & that's just from US to BR transfers. I can only imagine the nightmare it would be to make EU to US (& vise versa) Character transfers function with any semblance of acceptability in the end result - let alone the amount of customer complaints that would surely be spawned from any unacceptable transfer results.

As for the server-closing details... I think the longer Turbine takes to provide them - the longer it will be before anyone's servers are actually shut down, so take all the time you like Turbine! as I'm in no rush to see ANY of them ever actually closed...

One thing about the BR copy function and live copies. They can turn on auto-level for these copies. They have turned it off, for now, on purpose. There is no intrinsic reason why live copies should be allowed to auto-level. The purpose of BR is testing and a live copy can test as-is in a way that newly created characters can't.

[cdq1958]

I'm not normally picky, but one of the main reasons for outsourcing the EU operation to Codemasters was that it also outsourced any localisation work - so doing the translation of quests etc was Codemaster's responsibility, who interestingly in turn outsourced this to a company called "Partnertrans". The link below is useful background:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...lisation-again

Such a deal would have worked to Turbine's best interests - they did not have to worry about the details of getting a UK-Enlgish, French & German clients and the hassle of providing telephone support etc.

Anyhow, the internet back in 2006 / 2007 was more than robust enough to support trans-Atlantic gaming connections. Also globally-redundant data centres certainly existed - I was working for an organisation back in early 2006 that was looking to outsource it's hosting and this was a commonly-provided facility. In the Uk at least the explosion at the Buncefield Oil Depot had thrown light on the practice of having so many secondary data centres all collocated around an oil terminal.

Seconded. With respect to the internet, its infancy was in the 70s, then known as the Arpanet. The commercial internet as we know it today was rolled out in the early 90s. However, it wasn't until the hypertext transport protocol was added that the explosion in popularity occurred (1994 or so, if I'm remembering correctly).

I've been online since 1986. A cheap phone line modulator-demodulator ran at 300 baud or 30 characters per second (I can easily type two to three times faster than that). Most of the hosts at that time were in the largest cities so you had to make toll calls plus pay a subscription to access a server. Phone modems got faster, hosts were located in smaller cities, major services started offering either local hosts or 'toll-free' access numbers. T1 speeds were possible at $1000 per month. Eventually DSL lines were offered to the public but they had a distance limitation and internet over coax cable was just beginning to be technically feasible (also rolled out first in the larger cities). I got a DSL line in the 'rural' South (of the US) in 1997. That immediately cut my phone bills by hundreds of dollars (I ran a BBS back then). Still, transocean internet didn't even begin to be possible until the late 90s and early 00s when Level 3 Communications and others laid fiberoptic cables across the oceans (Atlantic first because it was shorter, so Bango's right). By 2006/7 having hosts in the EU was done for reasons other than lack of a direct connection from the US.

[Xhiu]

I do not remember it being this way. When the game launched, none of the North America - Turbine operated servers had any labels. It wasn't until the Codemasters take over that Landroval got the RE label. Turbine did not do a proper job of labeling NA and EU servers.

.

Ok I think you misunderstood what I was saying, probably because I didn't say enough. Landroval was never RP. It was made RE when CM servers came over and the "RE" people saw that EU servers had RP with real rules. They asked for but were told that they would get RE and that was it. They weren't happy with that. It was not written or even a verbal agreement to make Landy the go-to Role playing site for the NA. As someone already mentioned, originally all servers were supposed to be RE. Thats why there is an /ooc channel. Everything else (other than advice) was supposed to be In-Character chat. Role players kinda funneled down to Landroval. I'm thinking that some of the rp'ers went to laurelin for the role play enforcement. I dun know how it is going over there. I logged in a few times but I never really got into a story line for my toon so I logged off thinking it would happen some day.

Sorry for the misunderstanding

[Xhiu]

Seconded. With respect to the internet, its infancy was in the 70s, then known as the Arpanet. The commercial internet as we know it today was rolled out in the early 90s. However, it wasn't until the hypertext transport protocol was added that the explosion in popularity occurred (1994 or so, if I'm remembering correctly).

I've been online since 1986. A cheap phone line modulator-demodulator ran at 300 baud or 30 characters per second (I can easily type two to three times faster than that). Most of the hosts at that time were in the largest cities so you had to make toll calls plus pay a subscription to access a server. Phone modems got faster, hosts were located in smaller cities, major services started offering either local hosts or 'toll-free' access numbers. T1 speeds were possible at $1000 per month. Eventually DSL lines were offered to the public but they had a distance limitation and internet over coax cable was just beginning to be technically feasible (also rolled out first in the larger cities). I got a DSL line in the 'rural' South (of the US) in 1997. That immediately cut my phone bills by hundreds of dollars (I ran a BBS back then). Still, transocean internet didn't even begin to be possible until the late 90s and early 00s when Level 3 Communications and others laid fiberoptic cables across the oceans (Atlantic first because it was shorter, so Bango's right). By 2006/7 having hosts in the EU was done for reasons other than lack of a direct connection from the US.

I just had flash backs of this guy's 300b modem and 10" round monochrome monitor. OS on a floppy. *shudder* I moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 1994. I paid dearly for connections to my 'home' bbs. And before I moved it was really not possible to even do that. Took me awhile to find the path to the bbs.

sry, now back to your regularly scheduled trolling...

[Xhiu]

Even now, the character copies made to BR are not "completely functional copies". there simply are some things that cannot be "translated" correctly even when transferring to BR from US servers - For Example: All My transferred toons from Dwarrowdelf to BR cannot use the auto-leveling function in the Tavern...why?... probably because somewhere in the code is one of those 1s or 0s that blinds BR's software to the fact that those toons should be allowed to auto-level, & thus the NPCs to do so are never even spawned while playing on those toons, Whereas if I create a toon from scratch on BR, there are no such inabilities to auto-level. Same thing goes for certain other character attributes - things like marks & medallions (sometimes they transfer - other builds they don't) shared storage & wardrobe sometimes get bugged up as well when placing account bound items into them that happened to be in your chars bags at the time of transferring. & that's just from US to BR transfers. I can only imagine the nightmare it would be to make EU to US (& vise versa) Character transfers function with any semblance of acceptability in the end result - let alone the amount of customer complaints that would surely be spawned from any unacceptable transfer results.

You used to be able to autolevel copied toons if you knew what you were doing. The delimiting issue for copied characters is that they finished the intro normally. If you make a toon on BR and finish the intro before you enter the Tavern you will not be able to use the autoleveling features either. That was an intentional change. FYI: those NPC (MoL, Pinion, And Sc<something>) are not spawned they are always there. They are phased out for people that cannot use them. Marks from Live do not transfer to BR. If you have toons that need marks there is an npc you can use. If you read the readme's in the BR forums you would probably see this and much more. If you need any further assistance on BR stuff you can pm me

[Tsakiera]

Ok I think you misunderstood what I was saying, probably because I didn't say enough. Landroval was never RP. It was made RE when CM servers came over and the "RE" people saw that EU servers had RP with real rules. They asked for but were told that they would get RE and that was it. They weren't happy with that. It was not written or even a verbal agreement to make Landy the go-to Role playing site for the NA. As someone already mentioned, originally all servers were supposed to be RE. Thats why there is an /ooc channel. Everything else (other than advice) was supposed to be In-Character chat. Role players kinda funneled down to Landroval. I'm thinking that some of the rp'ers went to laurelin for the role play enforcement. I dun know how it is going over there. I logged in a few times but I never really got into a story line for my toon so I logged off thinking it would happen some day.

Sorry for the misunderstanding

As I recall it, during beta, a large portion of the population wanted a dedicated server as a RP server and since Turbine didn't identify one, a general consensus was reached to make Landroval the "unofficial RP" server, that way there would be a guaranteed RP population at release.

[bucko39]

Our focus right now is making sure that information we give you on this is as accurate as possible and does not cause more confusion than is needed.

Not to be rude, but if you guys were more straightforward and a bit more transparent there wouldn't be ANY confusion.

[Herwegur]

Not to be rude, but if you guys were more straightforward and a bit more transparent there wouldn't be ANY confusion.

This is the whole point of not rushing the info out.

[Boskone08]

While I would love to hear as much information as possible as early as possible, having seen what some members of our community (using the terms loosely) can and have done to create fear, uncertainty and doubt and build chaos, I can certainly understand Turbine wanting to be as precise and complete as possible before making any sort of announcement. Also, the snowstorm has had to impact their progress on many details. As much as I had hoped to see some info on which servers were likely to close this week (announcement, not closures), I will not be crushed if all we see is an announcement that, due to the weather, detailed info is not yet available. I do hope we get at least that sort of announcement this week, if nothing else. Just saying _something_ is appreciated.

[ShireDweller]

While I would love to hear as much information as possible as early as possible, having seen what some members of our community (using the terms loosely) can and have done to create fear, uncertainty and doubt and build chaos, I can certainly understand Turbine wanting to be as precise and complete as possible before making any sort of announcement. Also, the snowstorm has had to impact their progress on many details. As much as I had hoped to see some info on which servers were likely to close this week (announcement, not closures), I will not be crushed if all we see is an announcement that, due to the weather, detailed info is not yet available. I do hope we get at least that sort of announcement this week, if nothing else. Just saying _something_ is appreciated.

I understand the wish to have concrete info. on how the transfers are going to work before releasing it.

Like you I would also love to know which servers are the ones going to be closing sooner rather than later, so I can start to scout out a new home if needed, and make plans to be ready to do the free transfer as soon as we are able to.

[Tuco]

I understand the wish to have concrete info. on how the transfers are going to work before releasing it.

Like you I would also love to know which servers are the ones going to be closing sooner rather than later, so I can start to scout out a new home if needed, and make plans to be ready to do the free transfer as soon as we are able to.

Not to mention reserving favourite names on the designated survivors in advance of the immigration inundation.

[Alakin93]

The short answer is no. We are not going to jump ahead and tell you things that might or might not work and then have people mad when we find out later that something is not feasible. We have been very open with the information we have and will continue to do so. Our focus right now is making sure that information we give you on this is as accurate as possible and does not cause more confusion than is needed.

When we have more concrete information it will be shared just as we have been sharing what we have now. The goal of the team is ensure the transfer process is a smooth and all encompassing as possible. This means if we have to take more time to get things done before we share what will and will not be available, than so be it. As when we released this information, we will give everyone all the details and plenty of time to digest the information as soon as we can.

This is not a simple process for anyone involved, so please be patient. We will share everything we can, when it is ready to be shared, I promise.

Like someone above said, if you didnt 'joke' with us a week ago saying this week we would have had news about transfers, people wouldn't be asking here.
A dev CLEARLY wrote that THIS week we would have had additional infos. Now you come and tell us no.
Is Turbine kidding us to keep us pay VIP and keep playing while we are being told transfers details will be available soon?
That's just another joke. Hope we get any details in next 2 weeks as many many people got frustrated by this, dear Frelorn.
An answer to tell us who is saying the truth and who is kidding would be great!

[Grimsin'sRiders]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm excited! I been hearing for years things like "maybe when hell freezes over", but now ....it's finally happened - HELL HAS FROZEN OVER! & I am anxiously awaiting all the things the devs have been promising us!

[maartena]

Seconded. With respect to the internet, its infancy was in the 70s, then known as the Arpanet. The commercial internet as we know it today was rolled out in the early 90s. However, it wasn't until the hypertext transport protocol was added that the explosion in popularity occurred (1994 or so, if I'm remembering correctly).

I've been online since 1986. A cheap phone line modulator-demodulator ran at 300 baud or 30 characters per second (I can easily type two to three times faster than that). Most of the hosts at that time were in the largest cities so you had to make toll calls plus pay a subscription to access a server. Phone modems got faster, hosts were located in smaller cities, major services started offering either local hosts or 'toll-free' access numbers. T1 speeds were possible at $1000 per month. Eventually DSL lines were offered to the public but they had a distance limitation and internet over coax cable was just beginning to be technically feasible (also rolled out first in the larger cities). I got a DSL line in the 'rural' South (of the US) in 1997. That immediately cut my phone bills by hundreds of dollars (I ran a BBS back then). Still, transocean internet didn't even begin to be possible until the late 90s and early 00s when Level 3 Communications and others laid fiberoptic cables across the oceans (Atlantic first because it was shorter, so Bango's right). By 2006/7 having hosts in the EU was done for reasons other than lack of a direct connection from the US.

You are slightly off on your dates.

The first trans-atlantic fiberoptic cable was actually laid around 1988, and was intended to connect European universities to American ones. One of the first countries to get a top level domain outside the US was actually The Netherlands, whose .nl became active in 1986. The TLD's for .uk and .de were registered in 1985, but were not used until 1986, after the first .nl host was already up and running. Copper cables already connected several universities in Europe to the USA at that time, and the need for bandwidth was quickly realized, so fiberoptic cables were laid. When the first public internet provider was up and running in The Netherlands in 1994 (on dialup), transatlantic communication had already been going on through universities. Since calling a BBS in Europe or the US from eachother's continents was way too expensive, university students at the time used university computers to transfer software and data to/from the US/EU, after which it could be transported across BBS-es in each other's continents.

I met my wife on the internet in 1997, when transatlantic internet capabilities were well established. I got my first cable internet in 1996, and was one of the first 1000 Dutch people to get it.

Those were the days....

[maartena]

Like someone above said, if you didnt 'joke' with us a week ago saying this week we would have had news about transfers, people wouldn't be asking here.
A dev CLEARLY wrote that THIS week we would have had additional infos. Now you come and tell us no.
Is Turbine kidding us to keep us pay VIP and keep playing while we are being told transfers details will be available soon?
That's just another joke. Hope we get any details in next 2 weeks as many many people got frustrated by this, dear Frelorn.
An answer to tell us who is saying the truth and who is kidding would be great!

Tell me, have you never had a week you just couldn't finish a project, and needed some more time? They don't owe you anything, paying customer or not. If they need some more time to figure things out, I would much rather wait for info that is 100% good, so I can pass it on to my kin in a kinship wide email, instead of sending something out that they may later need to retract.

Don't panic. It will be ok.

[matalan]

The short answer is no. We are not going to jump ahead and tell you things that might or might not work and then have people mad when we find out later that something is not feasible. We have been very open with the information we have and will continue to do so. Our focus right now is making sure that information we give you on this is as accurate as possible and does not cause more confusion than is needed.

When we have more concrete information it will be shared just as we have been sharing what we have now. The goal of the team is ensure the transfer process is a smooth and all encompassing as possible. This means if we have to take more time to get things done before we share what will and will not be available, than so be it. As when we released this information, we will give everyone all the details and plenty of time to digest the information as soon as we can.

This is not a simple process for anyone involved, so please be patient. We will share everything we can, when it is ready to be shared, I promise.

Hi Frelorn!

This is entirely intended as friendly advice. (uh oh!) The new exec prod mentioned we would be getting details during this week. https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...67#post7304267

I totally understand that schedules slip, and things happen to slow stuff down, but something as huge as this it really doesn't help when info is mentioned as coming out, then we get told it isn't as you guys need more time. What would have been better for the exec to do would be to say in that thread I linked details will come as soon as possible, and only when known 100% mention when to us the players. You're now on the backfoot as having let a deadline slip so to speak, implying that hiccups have been happening internally, problems have been hit - otherwise we'd have had the details as Viv mentioned, right?

Internally as a company you can run around and get all sweaty as much as you like, the key is you shouldn't let the customer see that.

Again, I don't mean to sound harsh, I truly hope things are going well and all that jazz - but don't say details are coming, and then do a 180, it just adds to the concern IMHO. I'd advise not even saying when the details are to be released and just release when ready

Good luck!

[matalan]

Tell me, have you never had a week you just couldn't finish a project, and needed some more time? They don't owe you anything, paying customer or not. If they need some more time to figure things out, I would much rather wait for info that is 100% good, so I can pass it on to my kin in a kinship wide email, instead of sending something out that they may later need to retract.

Don't panic. It will be ok.

Sure, we've all had projects that have slipped. Thing here is, these are professional game devs and exec producers saying info is coming out this week - then not providing it by saying they don't want to "jump ahead" and give it us when not ready. It's like me saying I'll have this essay written to hand in on Friday, then Friday comes, and I tell my tutor I can't turn it in as I don't want to rush it. Maybe I shouldn't have said I would hand it in on Friday in the first place, waited til it was done, proof read it, checked it was factually correct, then got in touch with my tutor and said hey here it is!

Totally understand that it's a difficult time at Turbine and a LOT of work to do - but that is EXACTLY the reason why they need to be incredibly careful with saying things will happen, then they don't. It breaks trust, and that is bloody risky considering what they are undertaking.

Again to be very clear, I want this to work and go smoothly, I'm just pointing out that things could be handled a little better. If no release date for info was mentioned by Viv, we would all be none the wiser that a slip had happened. Should be rule 1 don't mention release dates til they are literally set in stone.

[Tuco]

...let a deadline slip ...!

I do not think that word means what you think it means. Vyvyanne said there would be more information coming "next week", which is this week, which isn't yet over. They told us on Monday that they were having two or three snow days. As far as I'm concerned that could put the time for more information out to next Tuesday or thereabouts, and even then, my impression was that she was simply giving us her expectation and plan rather than setting a "deadline".

I'm relaxing and questing and killing stuff. I'm not panicking or standing on their toes while they're trying to get work done. If they share information I'll accept it (perhaps with a grain of salt), and if it's actionable intel I'll act. If they're not ready to share information, I'll keep relaxing and questing and killing stuff.

[bucko39]

As far as I'm concerned that could put the time for more information out to next Tuesday or thereabouts, and even then, my impression was that she was simply giving us her expectation and plan rather than setting a "deadline".

Except, we've already got an answer from Frelorn yesterday saying there is now no ETA on more information. Meaning, it's doubtful it's going to happen this week or the next.

Let's face it, if they handled things better from the start, folks wouldn't have their knickers in a knot at the moment.

Instead, we got an PR smoke screen of a an executive producer's letter...that was followed by a couple days worth of posts from said new executive producer trying to put out fires.

This is what I mean by transparency. Turbine continues to act shady...and what you are seeing now on the forums is the end result.

But I agree with Matalan...if you aren't sure the information is coming "next week"...simply don't say it.

[Brinswith]

Except, we've already got an answer from Frelorn yesterday saying there is now no ETA on more information. Meaning, it's doubtful it's going to happen this week or the next.

Let's face it, if they handled things better from the start, folks wouldn't have their knickers in a knot at the moment.

Instead, we got an PR smoke screen of a an executive producer's letter...that was followed by a couple days worth of posts from said new executive producer trying to put out fires.

This is what I mean by transparency. Turbine continues to act shady...and what you are seeing now on the forums is the end result.

But I agree with Matalan...if you aren't sure the information is coming "next week"...simply don't say it.

I have updated my thread to reflect Frelorn's response yesterday. I don't make no apologies for Turbine but surely you guys can see and appreciate that there was some freak weather this week. I am as anxious as the rest of you and fear for my own server but even Turbine cannot control the weather.

[Brandon_Blackbird]

I have updated my thread to reflect Frelorn's response yesterday. I don't make no apologies for Turbine but surely you guys can see and appreciate that there was some freak weather this week. I am as anxious as the rest of you and fear for my own server but even Turbine cannot control the weather.

Just want to emphasize this again. Two weeks ago, no one knew there was going to be a blizzard, and once the blizzard happened, no one knew what the extent would be. I'm willing to give them a few more days. Their safety is more important than a server transfer.

[cdq1958]

You are slightly off on your dates.

The first trans-atlantic fiberoptic cable was actually laid around 1988, and was intended to connect European universities to American ones. One of the first countries to get a top level domain outside the US was actually The Netherlands, whose .nl became active in 1986. The TLD's for .uk and .de were registered in 1985, but were not used until 1986, after the first .nl host was already up and running. Copper cables already connected several universities in Europe to the USA at that time, and the need for bandwidth was quickly realized, so fiberoptic cables were laid. When the first public internet provider was up and running in The Netherlands in 1994 (on dialup), transatlantic communication had already been going on through universities. Since calling a BBS in Europe or the US from eachother's continents was way too expensive, university students at the time used university computers to transfer software and data to/from the US/EU, after which it could be transported across BBS-es in each other's continents.

I met my wife on the internet in 1997, when transatlantic internet capabilities were well established. I got my first cable internet in 1996, and was one of the first 1000 Dutch people to get it.

Those were the days....

Okay, thanks for the info , yet I could have been more clear in that I was primarily talking about the commercial internet. That the universities (and other entities connected to NATO) got it earlier isn't surprising if not well known.

[Tuco]

Except, we've already got an answer from Frelorn yesterday saying there is now no ETA on more information. Meaning, it's doubtful it's going to happen this week or the next.
...
But I agree with Matalan...if you aren't sure the information is coming "next week"...simply don't say it.

And Vyvyanne posted new info today, which is "next week" from when she said "next week". Can we move on now and discuss the details in her new thread, to the extent that they need discussing?