Having the same problem here as well it seems. The game started crashing on a regular basis since the latest patch, but first time tonight that it prevented me from logging in.
You can't say "My point is, GPG has a lot of experience in this area with a proven game (Supreme Commander) that demonstrates that this works. They know their stuff." if you had any decency. Being unaware of so many issues and still releasing the game (and after having a beta for so long) is a sign of ignorance and poor programming as well as poor network code design choices. This has put the whole game (which in essece is an OK game) in jeopardy. We don't care if it runs on little elves and
You can see if there are human players by seeing if any players involved uin the game has a ping higher than 0. I've also been getting a lot of "A atch is attempting to be made..." that don;t get resolved into anything.