When trying to play the game, I noticed it would crash over and over again, and the NGS icon would be stuck in the bottom-right corner of my screen, staring at me menacingly.
I came to realize the root of the problem was NGS not loading properly due to my Wi-Fi network. (Modern Maple works fine, so I don't get why Classic has an issue.)
I came to this conclusion after testing on my phone data. My game not only didn't crash, but NGS also loaded properly almost instantly. This made me realize it was likely a DNS issue.
The way I got around this was by using Cloudflare WARP. I don't think everyone experiencing disconnects/loading issues has the same issue, but if you're having a similar issue—or just want to throw whatever you can at it to see what sticks—I suggest testing it out.
Source: r/MSClassicWorld · by /u/FightMeFelix