This is an interesting topic after so much has happened. From what I remember, there was a split between pro-Axl and pro-Slash fans, because Slash was still out there in the public spotlight, and Axl was a mystery. We also had no internet, so it was talking amongst your friends or catching an MTV news hit, or reading about it in Maxim or Spin. An earlier post mentioned how Sp. Incident came out, and we didn't even realize it was happening - that's my memory, too. Like, WTF is this?! Cool! "Since I don't have you" did get a lot of airplay for a bit, but the band did nothing to carry momentum.
By the time '96-97 came around, GnR bootleg traders started connecting. I was a part of that crew, and we'd mostly trade CDs and Tapes from the early and glory days, then those bootlegs started showing up on Napster. There wasn't much "hope" or chatter about anything new. Axl was supposedly a giant recluse, and the cartoon he played before the '01 Rio show basically tells the full story of that perception
From what I remember being a giant GnR nerd carrying the torch, the "new material" chatter started w/ the OMG release, lining up with a bunch of rumors.