Same here... was bad before Artifacts, and now I cannot leave events like Red Alerts or the Crystalline Catastrophe without a freeze during map change.
Same here, I get stuck in the AOY loading screen for ages today. Funny thing, everything worked great yesterday immediately after patching... once I had restored my graphics settings.
It's happening to me as well, the game just freezes when changing from one map to another, usually at around 42-45 % but sometimes even at later stages. Sometimes, it happens 10 times in a row, sometimes I can play for hours without any problem. I already filed a support tickets about this twice, but it doesn't even appear…