Nightingale error

I spent the release day of Nightingale yesterday watching Twitch streams to get a better idea of the game. My main concern was the combat system, as I would hate to be stuck somewhere because I am too slow to vanquish some boss mob gating the content behind. But it turns out that you can play the game at different difficulty levels, and the easiest one seems very doable. Many people actually complain about combat being too easy, mostly because the AI of the mobs isn't great. So today I bought the game, and started the tutorial. So far, so good.

I am not playing right now, because the servers are down, which results in an "error getting shards for client" error message. One of the main problems people have with the game is the design decision to run Nightingale on centralized servers, which leads to all the well-known problems we had with MMORPGs for decades: Servers being down, servers being overloaded at peak hours, slow ping, rubber-banding in game, etc., etc.

While that sort of server architecture is necessary for MMORPGs, it seems somewhat unnecessary for a game with a maximum of 6 players on one shard, and many players playing solo. And I am surprised that after decades of experience, game companies still can't manage to get servers stable on release.