I've been one of the few or many (can't tell how many people suffered from this problem) who had rubber-band lag about 1 month after the game released. Basically everyone/thing around me would stop for about .5 all the way up to 2 seconds and then play catchup with the server once I synched back into it. I know it's packet loss, ISP, bla bla, etc. etc.
Regardless, the problem seems to be fixed now due to the recent maintenance. I can actually craft/gather reasonably fast, and its made a huge difference on everything in the game so far (for me at least, i know many don't suffer from this problem).
So whatever you did SE, please don't change it!