There's really no excuse for this nonsense, it's 2013, I would think games would launch better than games that launched in 2004. There's really 3 main problems:

1. The servers are way too full. They launched equal amount of servers on the JP side to the NA/EU side, even though the US alone has triple the population of JP (And I'm quite sure some Canadians are interested in playing this). And the biggest slap in the face or the straw that broke the camel's back is basically them adding in JP servers. I really have to scratch my head at this, because the source of the problem is the NA and EU servers all being full and locked. The JP servers started having a problem because everyone on NA and EU migrated over to the JP servers. I mean, being able to play, despite lag, is better than not playing at all, right?

2. Not a proper working queue system. Sorry, but capping a queue at 300, especially with the load the game is having now is pure nonsense. I remember the days in WoW when queues hit in the thousands and sometimes, even higher than that. Getting in the game shouldn't be like playing a slot machine.

3. No auto-afk system. Because the servers now are a first come basis, people are going to sit in game for hours on end so that they do not lose their spot. Though I hope they realize by doing this, the chances of frying their computer are pretty darn high, I can see why they do it. Rift had this problem when they went Free to play, and a week later, they had an auto-kick system after 15 minutes of not playing.

I just... It really blows my mind more than makes me upset now. How could they not see these easy to see problems? These issues were a problem in Open beta, how could you not see these problems would be much worse in EA and on Launch day??? Did any of the tech team watch launches of ANY recent MMOs???

I've been to quite a few launches: World of Warcraft original launch, Diablo 3, Rift, Tera, SWTOR, and now ARR. This ranks a close second to WoW's original launch, and at least with WoW, we could make characters and be in the game (Though the lag was unbearable. Hamster off it's wheel, indeed).

They need to either do:

1. Open more servers. And offer free transfers off of already crowded servers.

2. Fix the queue system cap. 300 cap is a pitiful number.

3. Put in an auto-afk removal system.

Something needs to be done before people get fed up and find another MMO. I hope SquareEnix realizes that it's not like how it was back when WoW just launched, there's a lot of MMOs out there nowadays, and people aren't going to be patient when other games have stable servers.

It's a real shame, because other than this mess, the game is wonderful. It's having the reverse problems that a lot of other games have (Smooth launches, but the game itself is blah or below average).

Here's hoping though...