I would also like to know your connection status on the character screen (ie: poor, good, excellent).

Is a possibility also that a node between you and the server is incurring DDoS attacks, which may not be fixable by SE or your ISP as it's somewhere in between. I used to have these problems, and had to resort to using a proxy program, like tunnelbear or WTFast. The latter cleared up much of my problems, but it is a paid service. You can use it for free for I think two weeks by setting up a paypal account without a funding source (which means billing is impossible if you forget about it). It's worth a try and might improve things for you.