I've been around MMO's for a long, long, long time (read: UO/EQ) and yes, most have had rocky launches. It's not easy to predict everything that can or will go wrong. THAT being said:
I am highly, highly disappointed by how this "early access" has started. Just because other games have had issues on launch, and just because it isn't uncommon, does not make it any more "right" or acceptable for broken releases. Many of these issues have been present since the beta, and that's the big problem, as the first post noted. This isn't the beta anymore, we are now paying customers who all shelled out money for an expected product to be delivered on the date provided, and many of us paid extra to get "early" access, which has basically amounted to a buggy, broken, or in many people's case, unplayable product. The excuse of, "Well, every MMO goes through early release problems" or "They didn't expect this kind of load" or patience etc, are all TRUE, but it they are all excuses nonetheless. What makes it more of a shame than anything is that WHEN playable, it's been an extremely enjoyable experience, and one I was really looking forward to sinking my teeth into, and while it still is very early, the mass problems (and I've ran into most of them myself) have somewhat muted the experience.
After the problems with the FIRST game, and with the tagline of "Reborn", you'd at least think the product would be extremely polished or at the very least they would have enough capacity to handle the opening. I won't be that person that sits and screams "Omg there are problems on launch I want a refund fix it all now" because that's neither realistic nor productive, but I'm also not going to give a company that should know better a free pass on extremely poor initial execution. And this isn't a F2P game where, you basically don't have any initial investment and therefore have less room to complain about the product that is delivered, we've already paid, and will continue to do so on a monthly basis. I expect better.