I can't speak to the Xbox stuff but for the most part I feel the Dawntrail launch has gone really well. Yes, there's some bugs, that's usually inevitable for a launch of this size, but the only game breaking one I've seen was Syrcus Tower which was fixed in under 24 hours without bringing the game down for maintenance.
But I don't think there's been anywhere near as many queuing issues as there was in Endwalker, and while I'm only just past the first dungeon in the MSQ the only issues I've seen (other than ST) have been cosmetic.
Aye. Granted, I'm on Dynamis so my experience is going to be wildly different from, eg. Aether, but I've only had one occasion of long queues, and that was when Aether died. And even then, it was steady progress, unlike the Login Roulette of Endwalker.
Having an expansion for an MMO be in early access seems super weird.
I understand the communication that it's still not as polished as it will be once the community beats it up a little, but the nature of an MMO is to kind of pressure a certain type of player to instantly race through that content. Once it's available, it "counts", right? They're not rolling back outcomes or anything? It's live?