Greetings,

The developers are aware that some players are having trouble patching and are researching / trying to produce a fix. While they continue to work, we've got a download available that might help your situation.

http://patch.istaria.com/launcher/Launcher1.9.zip

That contains the latest version of the patcher and has a new option on the Patch Options page (click Patcher Options at the character selection screen) that allows you to skip patching.

While we work towards a more permanent fix, please let us know if this at least allows you to work around the problem.