To clear up some of the confusion.
We released our Update Notes
here on Friday to alert you about the incoming update on 12/12. We called out that this would be required to participate in World Wars just to avoid a situation where you would be unable to attack like in a previous update.
It was our hope that Alliances would plan World Wars around this update, while they could still participate it did come with the risk of not all players being able to attack each other. We hope to be able to continue giving an early notice, 48hrs in this case, for future updates as well for this exact reason.
A reminder was sent on 12/12 stating that our rollout had begun, a format that is identical to our previous updates. Unfortunately, not everyone gets the update right away as it can take time to populate. We also want to ensure that if any extreme issue occurs we can correct it before it goes out to the wider community.
We expect the rollout process to be completed by tomorrow morning 12/14, it will be at this time that we are able to release the update to all users which is where the “This update will be required to download on 12/14 to play.” comes from in our forum alert and on social.
Hopefully, that helped clarify the situation, sorry that you had Alliance Members/nearby friends receive an update before you but we do not control the distribution of the update’s rollout process.