Server Network Error

From what I understand, the ARC servers were down - but not the actual game servers. Some fac mates weren't able to charge any zen due to this (which PWE might want to look into, as it can cause lost revenue for them if said person decides later on that charging might not be a great idea afterall...)

To my knowledge, there are three servers you connect to these days.
1) arc server
2) patch server
3) game server

Any time there is a patch you'll have to launch arc and log in to arc server, click the play button, open the patcher, and connect to the patch server.

Any time other than your first log in after a patch maintenance - you can skip logging into the arc server. Make a desktop shortcut of your elementclient.exe file (windows search should find it, if you don't know where it is at). At the end of your target line in the shorcut's properties window, input "startbypatcher" (without quotes). This sounds illogical given the argument name, but it just launches directly to the client. This enables you to launch into game without arc running (and really theres no benefit to having it run while playing currently) so you can avoid the issues with arc servers going down. I had a hell of a time one night getting logged back in to game after a reboot before nation wars, when the arc servers were down - until i used that argument in my shortcut. Just remember to launch via arc any time there is a patch so you can get the actual patcher to run automatically (or run the manual patch, which i think launches arc anyway)