Replying to provide an update. After today's maintenance, the situation is marginally improved, yet remains functionally unplayable.

Pc was freezing less this morning when I did my crafting dailies, but still freezing. I spend about an hour a day doing crafting dailies on a stable of characters. Before today, I had to play full screen, minimum settings, only essential crafting addons, logging during the work morning when server load was lower, speed-running crafting dailies to try and finish each character before a freeze that made me kill eso via task manager, and I still froze on almost half of them, 10+ freezes in that one hour. I dunno if those things helped, except for the pop size which definitely made a difference. Today I didn't freeze until I was on the last character, when listing items on guild traders. I suspect it's improved, yet not fixed. Trying again after work just now, I froze again three times within 25 minutes. I hope this helps troubleshoot whatever is wrong. I will also send this update in the forum DM and ticket email.

What is this bug exactly, the past few days i haven't been able to load onto any characters (atleast the 5 or so i want to play on). It just gets stuck on "Requesting character load..." and I force close the game and try again. the loading ouroboros icon even stops moving. I think this is what you're referring too but not sure. Either way, the past few days i haven't been able to play because I can't login to the game within the hour or 2 i have available to play

I'm on Xbox NA

With help from the ESO support ticket team, we identified my problem. I didn’t realize that even after uninstalling the game, some files persist in Documents > Elder Scrolls Online > live. I do not know which file it was, but something in there was causing the freezes. I deleted that folder, reinstalled, and now everything works fine. This topic is now resolved. My thanks to the support team for their help.