Hello and Good Afternoon Einmimiria and Dynratygus,

Good news! I am finally able to access and play all my characters again so a big THANK YOU! This ticket can be closed. Below is what and how I managed to get fully functional again in case anyone else has these issues or is curious.

After some more experimentation with another character on a completely different Data Center/server, i was able to verify that the problem was most definitely on my computer. After doing some research online I was able to narrow it down and verify I had a corrupt game file (0200000.win32.dat1) in the "C:\Users\Lyle\Games\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\game\sqpack\ffxiv" folder. That specific folder cannot simply be deleted and reinstalled like the 3 ex folders can, I'm guessing because it's the core game files. So I did in fact have to do a full download/uninstall/reinstall of the game. Like I said, I'm in the process of moving, so unfortunately I'm only limited to Hotel WiFi (they do not allow Ethernet plug-ins for some absurd unknown reason), so it took some 14+ hours to download (which is why I was trying everything but that first).*

Even once I got it downloaded and installed, it was still freezing after picking the Data Center and maxing out my Drive R/W until the game shuts itself down, so again back to Google. I found out that there's been an ongoing problem with higher end and overclocked CPUs and/or GPUs causing the game to freeze when it tries to play the opening movie after a fresh install. The 2 workarounds I found were either turn off some CPU cores (which i have no idea about), or go into the FFXIV.cfg file in "C:\Users\Lyle\Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn" with a txt editor and change the "CutsceneMovieOpening" option from 0 to 1. Once I changed that option, I was able to get past the Data Center selection screen and log into my characters just fine, even the ones that were stuck in North Shroud. After that I tried copying back over my original config folder, and my settings/UI is exactly how I had it and no errors!

So for now everything appears to be working with no issues. I just want to thank you again for your guidance and suggestions, and also for your patience with dealing with my issues and ignorance! I will make sure I leave a favorable comment on the Customer Service Survey if I can. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments, otherwise have a good weekend and stay safe/healthy from the COVID-19.*

V/R
Nevitosh