A statement from Kemor clarifying the release of SI which he posted on the BW forums.
Ok, let's try clarify some things a bit:
19th February:
This is the official release date for French & German distribution.
ALL servers will be patched to 1.57 on this day(which means SI + patches).
Players with a box of SI (European one, wanadoo/GOA logos, any language), will be able to activate their accounts for SI and play with SI, even if they are "English players".
21st February:
This is the official release date for United Kingdom (English boxes). Why on Friday? Simply because in UK, you can only release a game on Friday!
Now, if a player living in UK gets a SI box (because he ordered from German or French websites, or because he received the box early), he will be able to activate his account on the 19th, no problem with that.
When you are distributing in many different countries, it's hard to have an exact "release date", especially with online resellers. All I can say is that the official release for UK is the 21st of February, that's the official thing.
Hope it clarifies some points. I'll come back on that in the "Friday but not Friday because of SI" news, which should be posted early next week