I think the problem with global chat was just the number of players. I wasn't able to get on yesterday (only tried a couple times), but it is working for me now.
For the crash, please email supportdos@larian.com, with a description of the problem and the report.zip file generated by the
D:OS support tool (for the PC version). The report contains your saves, though you may want to delete older saves to reduce the file size.