Any time you get a "connection timed out" notice, no matter what you're doing on the internet, odds are the connections are bad. In the case of a game, it could be a server in a state of crashing, being attacked, or one of a few other things the user can't do anything about. You can check the home page (server status is at the bottom) or check
this thread to see if there is a server problem. Someone is usually pretty good about posting about outages.
A user can make sure it isn't their internet connection by rebooting their computer and/or resetting their network router or modem. Sometimes things just bug up and a reboot is needed. If you're on a wireless network connection, plug it in with an Ethernet cable. Sometimes WiFi just doesn't work right. Moving to another room or closer to the WiFi router might help. Solutions for cleaning up your network other than that may get technical.
Otherwise there can be problems in the middle. A DDOS attack on a network provider somewhere in the middle can cause problems.
Opinions expressed in this statement are the authors alone and in no way reflect on the game development values of the actual developers.