The VPN not working makes it less likely to be a network filtering issue.

Storage could be an issue later on because the patches will slowly take up more and more GB of space, but if you are in the game then you got all of the patches.

You need some storage afterwards for the page file, which is what your computer uses as if it were RAM when the RAM is full. 10 GB is enough for that, and is enough for now generally, but in the long term it would be a good idea to see what isn't needed anymore (for example install files in the Downloads folder that are already installed or extracted).

You could play with changing the launcher setting from DX11 to DX9. You could also update your graphics driver (if any are available), or run in compatibility mode with Windows 8.

It's possible for other applications to drag down the operation of the game, so what you can do to manage that is click the taskbar and open Task Manager, then observe which Processes or Details are taking all the CPU, RAM or Disk Space. You can google applications you don't know the purpose of. You can also click on the ffxiv executable in Details and adjust the Priority to "Above normal" so that your CPU considers it more of a priority.

I'm obviously stumped and none of these things should have to be the solution, but sometimes they do solve problems for me with other games.

You could also try to confirm that your laptop is actually using your graphics card. If it's using the on-board intel graphics it would explain a lot.