I think you must have been in a bad group, or perhaps with maintenance so close there was some lag or bugs or something? I literally just finished my first adventure (Hycrest @lvl 16), full pug and I died maybe 7 times during the thing but we only wiped once and that was on the very first group and there were like 10 mobs and we got overwhelmed. 2 people died on the final boss but no wipes - there were a LOT of telegraphs though. I am playing on US servers from the EU with a ping of about 150ms and still had least deaths at the end of it. Tank couldn't really keep aggro but the healer was good. DPS mostly just ran around kiting and we aoe'd and hoped for the best and it seemed to work. If someone died they just rezzed and ran back asap and usually got back before fight was over. I did only get a bronze medal though.