I'm playing since the first week of EA and the only problem regarding multiplayer they solved probably was the frequent stuttering (Which even came back in 1.8.0) and other bugs. Hosting a server have barely any improvements compared to Warband, looks even worse, at least from my first experience. Also, my region doesnt have an official server, and the interest of the people here are either playing the single player, since its stable, or not buying the game at all.
I know it's hard to pull such a game after Warband so I never had high hopes on anything, but damn everything looks worse than I imagined.