Leaderboard API Encoding Bug

Hello dear Blizzard API Team,

in very rare cases the result of the Leaderboard API delivers wrong charcter names:
/data/wow/pvp-season/30/pvp-leaderboard/3v3?namespace=dynamic-eu&locale=en_US

When you inspect the result of the request, you will find players with invalid names, such as:

  • “name”:“ИгромаE586DA”
  • “name”:“BaliavD8B3F1”

This regex can be used to find those invalid character names: “name”:"[^"]*[0-9 | A-F]{6}"

The weird part always consists of letters A-F and numbers 0-9 and makes up 6 characters in total at the end of the “invalid character” name.

Further analysis of my database showed:
BaliavD8B3F1-draenor-eu was found, first imported on: 2021-03-02 22:36:10.229000
Baliavac-draenor-eu was found, first imported on:
2020-12-16 16:26:51.877000

ИгромаE586DA-soulflayer-eu was found, first imported on:
2021-03-08 17:39:03.288000
Игроманх-soulflayer-eu was found, first imported on:
2021-01-23 20:40:32.023000

Also both variants of the “player result” have the same character ID which essentially shows that it is actually the same character!

Since i did not change the software part which imports players/player records nor the database structure/encoding/etc. i highly assume that this issue is on your side.

Best regards
John

Maybe I’m late for this, but those names I think they’re ‘forced name changes’.

I mean, in WoW, when your character name needs to be renamed, for example:

  • Transfer to another realm where that name it’s not available.
  • Character undelete and the name it’s in use by another character in the realm.
  • Flagged name because it was reported and reviewed as a inappropriate name.

Then the system adds some characters and flag it as invalid, then force you to select a new name next time you want to use that character.