Stuck in map loading screen

Forgive the Copy/Paste from a different thread, but the questions are also relevant to your situation.

Are you running any antivirus/firewall/security software (including the built-in Windows firewall)?

Have you double-checked that Path of Exile has been properly added to the Exclusions list?

It might also be worthwhile removing the Exclusion and re-adding it and see if it helps then.

Are you on a managed network, or is it your private residential internet? (are you on a campus/corporate network, or normal home internet)

Do these other people happen to be on a different gateway/region?

You can sometimes tell by CTRL+Clicking on their portal and see what the "Region" says. It's not always populated, but it can sometimes give a quick indication.

You can also usually tell by tracing to the instance server you connect to, and compare it to one of your own instances. The instance server address can be found in the Client.txt log file at the very end immediately after connecting to the instance. It will say "Connecting to instance server at: <ip address>:6112" or similar.

You can run a WinMTR trace to the ip address listed, then compare the hops to one of your own and see the route. It would be recommended to do these traces together for comparison of your network conditions to both.

The internet is much like the roads in a city... getting to the library is going to be a different route than getting to the grocery store. If there happens to be traffic congestion, or an accident on the road, or construction.. it's going to impact the route to one location but not necessarily both. You might be encountering issues getting to the other people's hideouts because of the route it is taking, but not to your own.

This isn't always the case, but it is a common one. The usual case is the router or security on the network blocking the server transition... but you already checked the exclusions and it didn't seem to make a difference.

If you know there is an issue connecting to Frankfurt, you can run traces to it (300+ packets preferably). If there is a consistent issue showing up, you could escalate that to your ISP (who would likely escalate to the other provider, etc).

There's likely not much you can personally do to fix it if that is the case however as it is well outside of your control (and possibly the ISP as well). Only way to know for sure though is to continue tracing to the affected instances or regional gateway though and see if it shows consistent signs of issues.