Yes... they should add a new cash shop option for wealthy contributors: New server to improve game performance plus a shard with a name of your choice *ONLY* $50,000.
What he was saying is that we were all getting stuck on the launcher autoupdate. After some time (around 15-30 minutes ago) the launcher autoupdate server was fixed and now we can all start the game. But now the login server is down and we're all stuck on the same part you're stuck on (without redownloading the game).
Yup, I'm glad this is widespread. Means it'll get a fix soon. I'm having the Cryptic Launcher Autoupdate fail. "Unable to establish connection to Patch Server. Please check your Internet connection. If problems persist, please contact Technical Support." I have a feeling they would actually prefer we don't contact…