Both Characters Stuck on Infinite Loading Screen

[mara-v]

I'm a little resistant to messing with VPNs and the router because I'm not very tech-savvy and I'd hoped meeting the system requirements for the game would be enough to play it. I did log into my router but was a bit overwhelmed by the options and I'm afraid of messing something up or making my network less safe. I appreciate your knowledge and will keep in mind that it's a possible issue, but I'm going to just wait a bit to see if there are any other solutions before going further in that direction.

EDIT: Curiosity immediately got the better of me and I downloaded a trial of a gaming VPN. I'm a few minutes into the loading screen loop. I'll try to mess with some of the settings on this program but I'm starting to think it's on the game end or my laptop is just messed up somehow. Could low storage be an issue with ffxiv? I can fit the game in but there's not a whole lot of room on my computer afterwards (about 10gb).