I was trying to log in earlier today, BEFORE the scheduled time for start of maintenance, but login was not responding on the client AND neither did it work on the forum; that was not my connection, I had no issues with other Internet sites.

It should now be maintenance time although the forum does not yet mention it as started, but login to the forum worked again roughly at the scheduled maintenance time.
Besides this, the forum now shows a times stamp where the minutes are off by a bit over 15 minutes (my PC is synchonized to time servers, so the forum IS off).

I eventually received a reply to my support ticket made at that time.
The reply was that they started the maintenance an hour earlier that day (without warning on the forum); only the players who were online then would know if that was true...

As usual, the website news for Start and End of maintenance were posted long after both were done, therefore pointless... there was no mention there that it would have started an hour earlier.
I already mentioned months ago what I thought about their 'IT staff'...