Well, I'm glad that I'm not the only person with this problem.
I had this once in OB before, I was sort of dreading the moment that this would happen again. Before, it just fixed itself after a few minutes.

I'm having the same issue.

same here! done the Starbase 144 Mission after beaming from station loading screen for ages ( i waited 20 minutes ....) now i get "Retrieving list of characters"

same here. Damn! But still great game :=)

Same problem here problems only going to get worse when release comes unless cryptic increases there server cap by alot

Currently experiencing the same thing. And have tried reloading the game, going to try restarting it. Not sure if it is serverside or not, otherwise, people wouldn't be able to log in.

Beyton V mission here... takes like 10 minutes to load it, then when I finally got in, got the mission done, and go to leave, the game freezes - I guess - and then I ctrl-alt-del the game, relaunch it, and Im stuck at retreiving characters.

Im guessing the game hasnt force-logged me out yet.

Stuck on retrieving list of characters screen.......website shows server up....launcher shows server up.

Same here...... same mission.... I logged out and now I can't log back in....stuck at "Retrieving Character List"