I'm experiencing these exact same issues, and it just started happening to me yesterday. I didn't change anything on my computer or install anything either. I don't think it's a performance issue because I have a quad core and the game was running absolutely perfect two days ago. Now, I have long load times, the game would just stop randomly and then start back up again a minute later, like it lagged for a whole minute, and maps suddenly just stop loading until I sit there for a minute or two, and then it'll load again. Very frustrating.