I've spent the last hour trying to help a friend over remote desktop with the same issue. I'm currently logged into Balmung just fine, have run a CT, no issues.

A friend who just bought the game yesterday was able to play fine last night, but all day today he's been unable to login and has been getting the Error 2002 disconnect issue.

I'm a network engineer so I'm familiar with the standard connectivity BS. We've bounced client workstation and modem, I've disabled the firewall entirely, have forwarded the relevant ports for the game, have even attempted forwarding ALL traffic (unable to perform router bypass as he has a combination router/modem from his ISP). I've checked all relevant services as well, but he's unable to load his character list at all on Balmung.

Our most recent step was to attempt creating a character on an alternate server, which he was able to do during testing (on Yojimbo). I'm unsure if this is specific to Balmung, or perhaps one of the authentication servers for the Aether group but this definitely isn't a client side issue. Can someone please investigate further?