I hoped such issue will be never experienced by me. I was wrong.
After yesterday’s game update logging into game is stuck on “Retrieving character list”. Restarting everything or reinstalling game does not help. Created a starting account and it works like a charm. Main account does not. Yesterday I was neither able to post into forums nor see any of my characters in Armory. Today I can do both things but still unable to get into game.
P.S. What is interesting. I left the game unattended. It was disconnected and button “Reconnect” appeared. When I clicked on the button, the “Retrieving character list” was passed. So I was able to enter the world. It took over an hour though (waiting for disconnect while “Retrieving character list” was shown).
P.P.S. After some days I’ve found that it is actually some video driver bug - window is not updated after said stage. Why everything is fine with Starting Account and with PTR - I have no idea. In meantime I will try to update my video driver and hopefully problem will be gone then.