Same issue here. Hope a blue post comes along soon.
Ive been playin fine for a few hours after following what others said about updating my graphics drivers. I have an rtx 2080 and after the driver update and reboot, no issue.
same issue. tried updating video driver direct from nvidia. have no idea how to start wow from twitch.
Dang game just keeps freezing up my whole system.
everything else works just fine just wow is messed up.
hope they fix this soon, it’s the weekend and i wanted to play some.
I have been fine today… so far. But my son’s computer has been doing this for hours too! We tried everything. Glad to know it isn’t just him! Hoping for a fix soon. Until then, thanks to those who provided the hint about going directly into the exe file - that finally got him in to play.
this drove me absolutely bonkers today trying to figure out the problem. i disabled startup apps one by one, did extensive troubleshooting as much as i was able with my limited knowledge
doing a system restore didn’t fix it, going back to a restore point a month ago didn’t fix it
i finally nuked all my drives and reinstalled windows
everything worked perfectly until i downloaded the bnet launcher app and installed it
Mines doing the very same thing I uninstalled and reinstalled wow and the launcher made sure all drivers were up to date and still freezing up my Computer when I launch the desktop app. Very frustrating to say the least.
I started having this same issue today. So far, I’ve flushed DNS, updated GPU driver (rtx2070), Uninstalled/Reinstalled Launcher, and done a full diagnostic scan of my PC. Still experiencing this issue. If I try to launch the game from the data folder it says the files need to be repaired and sends me back to Launcher… What kind of sick game?
did you down load the game ready or studio or both? not sure if i needf to download both or not.
Sorry that you’re still having problems. After installing the August drivers I have played for a couple hours without any issues. I hope you have sorted yours out now.
I used the game ready driver.
OK by getting the latest NVIDIA driver, it cleared up the problem for my GTX card
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my friend having same issue r u all using ssd cause i am not
Definitely the GeForce drivers. Had the same issue, used the GeForce Experience app to update my drivers, and was able to open & run WoW immediately. Looks like Nvidia recently released an update to support ray tracing in Shadowlands, and I’m guessing this is related to that.
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GTX or RTX both need the same latest driver 452.06 from Nvidia web site and you don’t need the “Experience” and can unclick that unless you want it.
Simply download and install and freeze fixed
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Having the same issue. Tried re-installing the launcher and it still does the same. Freezes almost instantly and after a few min the computer reboots itself. Using a Windows 10 machine with an NVIDIA graphics card. It works (slow and boggy) on my old Windows 7 laptop, also with an NVIDIA card.
Same here. No issues whatsoever since the patch but this afternoon, crash after crash til I realize everything else worked. Stuff like twitch and youtube. I was happy to learn it isn’t my graphic card. Thanks to this worgen here, I could still play by by-passing the bnet, and got onto the game straight with the launcher. Why B-net WHY? What did we do to you? 
Anyone knows if the other games that I never play and never will play at the bottom of the bnet (activision games) had any major patches, or if something else could be the source of the problem? I feel sad for the ones who reinstalled…
Updating the NVIDIA drivers did the trick. You have to do it from NVIDIA’s website because Device Manager will say your drivers are up to date. If your Blizzard launcher tells you to reinstall your games, use the ‘locate game’ link to the right of the Play/Install button.
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I did a full uninstall of my video drivers then installed the game ready driver 452.06 through GeForce Experience and fixed my issue.
I’m guessing the video the launcher autoplays has something to do with it; after updating drivers my computer no longer hangs, but occasionally the video element on the launcher page for WoW will be filled with a garbled, pixel-y mess. I’ve experienced GPU driver hanging before from nasty interactions with certain video files.
Updated to NVIDIA driver version 452.06 and Battle.net now launches without freezing. So far. Hopefully this takes care of the issue.