We are sorry, our server for downloading the maps, textures etc. is temporarily down, but the problem should be solved soon.

Is that the reason why almost no player (at a certain period of time even not a single one) was online today, or is that just by accident?

That's the reason, exactly. Jendrys said, that the TechCom webserver where is the redirect located was attacked by some hacker. Unfortunately I don't have further info.

Actually, there might be something even bigger amiss here, as half the servers in my favs tonight were pinging at 100-150ms and the other half ~500-700ms (laboRHeinz' server, CEONSS, was 570ms; I wanted to join but it'd be unplayable). Perhaps some vital part of the backbone was offline this evening and traffic between east/west europe was slowing down cause of it. If that was the case, many ppl trying to play on TechCom tonight would join for a bit, see that bad pings persisted and decide to take the night off or try playing Torlan on a demo server (like I did, and saw plenty more ppl there than any usual weeknight). Nothing to do with the availability of your file server, of course, but this was also happening tonight and I think it bares mentioning.

It's still down, damn. Could anyone lend us ca 2 GB of webspace with FTP access? You can run the webserver even at home, if you have public IP address. And at least 10 Mbps upload is needed.

Edit: I've found a provisional solution, the download server is now on game server (and it can slow down the game).

Redirect server up and running! Enjoy the fast downloads again.