They didn't drop any balls. the NA population is quite simply a lot larger, clearly, and with the gazillion people doing story instances it probably just means they need to increas capacity.
This happens on pretty much every MMO launch, where they underestimate the demand. It has nothing to do with the open beta only being 3 days. 95% of the Real resting was done well before open beta even started.
As long as this only happens once and is all cleared up by official launch, I think everything will be fine. I've never met an MMO at launch that didn't have technical issues pop up. It's to be expected.
