I’ve had multiple other players mention increased frequency of disconnects, random bugs and chat malfunctioning, either disconnecting or keeping you connected to groups and raids that no longer exist.

I have myself experienced disconnecting more often, as well as having chat issues. Over 5 years that I’ve played this game, I went from experiencing 0 chat issues to having chat disconnect in OD only sometimes, to having chat disconnect in OD every time, then to it disconnecting in any scenario, OD or SP every single run multiple times, to now having other people claim that they even have chat disconnect while in agartha (while nobody else was experiencing the issue). I am reasonably confident that chat and disconnect issues are server side as I would often retain chat connection despite losing connection to server. This is a critical issue as it directly impacts the only way new players have to find and connect with other players and will lead them to more readily assume that the game is deader than it is.

My assumption is that it’s either some kind of accidental serverside malfunction, or intentional server downsizing, either one need to be fixed to provide the least interrupted gaming experience possible.