So has Aether crashed again?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

This isn't being caused my a bug; server uptime should in no way be affected by a patch. Plus, as others have stated, other companies really haven't had issues nearly this bad. In fact, even FFXI was better than this, to my recollection, and that was a far older game.

"Bug testing" in a colloquial sense. Keep in mind, few MMOs have major updates near as frequent or with as much added content. Compare WoW's update cycle (12-15 months) to XIV's (3-4 months). While the scale may be different, the constant updates give chance to more errors, especially if you're at all familiar with how easily code can break.