it is doing that when you press "/" to end a convo with egos.
Um, well.... um, I don't have an ego. Could never decide on what to make. ^^;
However, my wife does, and I could duplicate this minute-long freeze when I logged in as her and talked to her ego. When I pressed / to close the chat, it didn't freeze up. However, when I clicked on the "X" button in the top-right corner of the chat window, it did. Well, the first time I did this, anyways. It did not occur again a second time.
Two other instances I've seen this lockup happen:
1. Closing chat window with House Manager Brownie (or maybe it's when I closed the housing search window? Not sure).
2. When I skipped the cutscene for the Alby Advanced boss (by the time my game client responded, they were already done with the boss...).
Not really sure what's causing these freezes, but it seems to be consistent. It only happens the first time when said action is performed while the game client is running, and then doesn't happen again until I restart the client. The only thing I can guess is may be with how Abyss or the new version of CrackShield is working with Win8, but I would need to test some more variables first...