Me too! On a brand new laptop on both IE and Chrome - had to go back to the old one and it worked fine. That doesn't help you but at least you're not on your own...
a few tests ago this was happening to me on firefox so i switched to IE and its been good since. dont know if that will help but yeah try another browser
Happens occasionally to me. Usually fixed after a few browser refreshes. My guess is that the items are still loading so I'd also suggest waiting a bit more before refreshing to see if they do load.
My problem is not browser dependent and neither waiting nor refreshing helps. It starts just fine through loading, reticulating and pulling mussels with high rates of data transfer but when it gets to unpacking - anywhere between 0% and 42% - everything stops, data transfer ends completely. If I get into the game I'm greeted with a 'temporary disconnected from the server, everything should be OK message' in the chat window and a distinct lack of anything I can interact with. It's like the Langoliers.
ETA, I have a help ticket logged for this one, they are being very patient with me :¬)