I've been making .TPK files of the ESRI Imagery basemap for a while by using the Download Map function in ArcGIS Pro. I intend to use them in Explorer. What used to take maybe six hours to extract today takes maybe six minutes. Maybe there has been a major upgrade to the ESRI servers or something like that? Has anybody else noticed this?
WAIT --- I upgraded to ArcGIS Pro 2.3 yesterday. maybe that did it.
EDIT - Confirmed. Coworker updated to 2.3 and now making .TPKs is lightning fast.