I've been playing all headstart and the server has been up constantly... As for your friends and their headstart codes, sounds more like the retailer's fault. The event however has been a mess and hasn't been working for a few days, but that hardly makes this a horrible headstart. The game has run fine, the servers have been up the whole time other than maybe one night at midnight where they brought it down for about an hour for maintenance.

So...yes. It has been smooth.