Same issue here 
I’ve done all the same steps as you- I have to kill the process in task manager.
I’ve been searching for the last week trying to find a work around, haven’t found one yet 
I litteraly can’t even play.
Whenever i try to load in, it crashes on loading screen…
But when i get over it, and get to playable state… it crashes immediately, and need to kill it anyway.
If this issue will persist after next patch, I am quiting with Conan for a long time. And I am gonna write a negative constructive critique on Steam and Metascore, because if the game’s poor performance for 40€.
Two friends are willing to buy it, but no when i quit
.
So Funcom, if you want to loose 3 potentional customers, just continue with your bad work out there.
This game have so much unsolved “crashes/freezes” that are there on Forum for weeks, and none of the mods could not help them. So the people stopped playing it, as I will do…
BF1 at High preset, smooth 60FPS
GTA V at High 70FPS
Overwatch…CS:GO…WoW… all running smooth above 80FPS
So if any mod listen, dont say it’s because of my PC ffs, and no I am not gonna to re-download your non-optimized files. 52Gigs for what!!! WoW world is 40x bigger, not mentioning dungs and unused plain space… And it’s on 40Gigs ffs…
I would not be such in rage if this was some free game…5/10€ low title. But this “amazing freeze fun” costs me 40€! Over-rpized as hell for the poor current state of the game.