While it's be tough at almost all times of the day to log on due to server congestion, once I'm finally in the game and playing it's been nothing short of great.
I have high hopes for end-game seeing that the world in general is beautiful and VERY stable (crashed every 15 minutes in XIV, haven't crashed once in XIV: ARR). The game mechanics seem solid, the battle system seems fun, improvements have been boundless in DoL, and DoH skills don't seem quiet so useless. I've not left the area of Ul'Dah and have not spent one second with nothing to do, and very little time wonder 'what am I supposed to do next.'
Stress not over the server congestion and connection issues. No doubts in my mind, a few weeks go by and they'll have the majority of the server issues taken care of.
Honestly, I'm not sure what the fuss is. Sure it's frustrating, but most *good* games I've played there have been server issues after simply patching the game, yet alone booting up the whole damn thing from new.