Your second issue is due to playing on a congested server. Ultros doesn't have instanced zones, for example. Maybe the implementation of zones was a little sloppy, but it is a far cry better than the horrible congestion those servers suffered in 2.0.

The devs are monitoring the traffic on each server, and once the daily login number starts to drop, they are going to remove the instancing from the currently affected servers. So bare with it a few more weeks.