I've never encountered this sort of an issue in over a decade. When trying to exit the game by any means, from any location or from character selection, the game client freezes and hangs, then stops responding. I've read that similar things were experienced by people 1-3 years ago, but I haven't been able to find any cause or solutions for this problem.
I have not installed anything new in my computer and all software and hardware seems to function normally, the only changes I could think of are the recent Windows updates, but I've played last night and didn't experience this issue, while today I can no longer seem to be able to exit the game normally.
Edit 4 (Solution...?):
I don't know if this is what solved the problem, but I took two actions that may or may not have changed the outcome: I updated my Geforce Experience and Gefroce NVidia drivers, and re-enabled Windows Security taskbar notification icon, then I gave the PC a restart and now I can exit the game without an issue. For now.
Edit 3:
Redownloading the game .dat file and deleting the temporary cache files didn't help.
Edit 2:
I tried to run the game client with -Repair and the repair itself also stopped responding.
Edit 1:
Reliability history log (one of them):
Description
The program Gw2-64.exe version 1.0.0.1 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Security and Maintenance control panel.
Process ID: 2d78
Start Time: 01d9fe695a376329
Termination Time: 4
Application Path: G:\Guild Wars 2\Gw2-64.exe
Report Id: b8a1fa97-b4ac-4bf6-98c8-a93e6ddc418c
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
Hang type: Unknown