The way it's supposed to work is:
- Validates your Steam account (requires pinging Steam).
- If there is space in the login server, you login to the character screen.
- If there is not space, it should indicate that you're put in a queue with an estimate of how long it will take for you to login.
- Once you hit "Enter Nave" or load in, then you are transitioned to the actual game server, which is different.
Note - Some have mentioned that if you get "Login Failed" in the current situation, if you don't hit cancel, you will stay in an invisible queue. This is not intended, but may be how it's working currently just as an FYI, I have no confirmation.
According to Henrik (the CEO), what happened this time was so many people hit the login at the same time due to the stress test key release (apparently up to 3000 in one second) that the login server (and database, which is accesssed whenever a new character is created) got bogged down and basically locked up. And then people continued to hammer it after that fact trying to get in.
So the queues were not correct, and it would often just fail even if you got in a queue (as not enough people were actually moving on to make space).
They decided to take down the server and try to implement some fixes and put it back up, but as far as I can tell, it's not up in a stable state yet.
Henrik has repeated a number of times that this is a stress test, the login server (and database) is one are of potential point of failure, and they need this level of real world stress to figure out where the bottlenecks are and fix it. So it was a resounding succes on that end (better to have it happen now than on release), but definitely disappointing for people waiting.
Having huge streamers publically log in and all their fans log in at the same time is a great way to create a maximal "everyone log in at once" event, and again it's better for this to even happen now, during the work hours (for many Americans at least) on a Thursday, so they can work to resolve these issues prior to the weekend when most people will log in.
Saker - Thousands of players had gotten in and were playing. Imagine it as a huge stadium with one door, a bunch of people got in, then people were just crammed at the door as the crowd started to just surge beyong what the door could accomodate.
I think it's unfair to call it a failed "event" by any metric. It succeeded in giving them incredibly valuable data about their login server, which is the point of a stress test, and it goes all the way until Monday. Frustrating to people excited to play for sure, but hardly a massive failure. They are a team of around 27 people and it's currently 11pm in Sweden, they are scrambling like crazy to identify the issue (which they've never seen before), fix it and get things back up. Trust me, they all want the server up way more than we do. =)