Hi Ghost, Falkor
Well, I finally managed to get online and play some yesterday (Sunday, 12/17). During the gameplay, I had occasion to PM another player - [pm <playername> - and the system came back with 'no matching names found'. I spoke with the player over regular chat - [c - and asked them to check their mailbox, as that message usually happened when a persons mailbox was full. Their mailbox was empty, so I asked them to try to PM me with the same result ... no matching names found. So I tried to leave some PMs to other players, and every '[pm <name>' came up with the no matching names msg - even when I tried to use just partial names to get a list.
Wha' happened???
EDIT: Addendum - Logged in again Monday morning, tried to PM some online players ... same result.