I then noticed that an update had been rolled out, downloaded and installed it, and the problem persisted. Tried clearing out save data and data from the old version that might have been causing it to no avail. I can say I'm running on Windows 7 and fairly certain I have all the requirements listed on the website. The log file in the program folder wasn't really helpful to me, but, figured it might be of help to you.
[CPU] Detected 8 CPUs
NO SELFEXE: bootstrapping from CWD
WARNING: No bootstrap code found, defaulting to working directory for engine code!
Creating particles thread 0
Creating particles thread 1
Creating particles thread 2
Creating particles thread 3
Creating particles thread 4
Creating particles thread 5
Creating particles thread 6