A lot of people will experience this, it's because Cryptic/PWO haven't had the foresight to upgrade/change the servers, so they're buckling under the weight of thousands of people attempting to log in and play. Personally, if I had the time, I'd wait for the load to go down (i.e. when european players go to sleep/whatever)…
I remember when maintenance lasted the allotted time, and not several hours after said time. You (Cryptic, PWO, whoever) really should consider getting better servers if they cannot handle the load. Service seems to have deteriorated ever since PWO took over, but that's just my perspective. Here's my tracert. Tracing route…