Wonder if related…buying a few items off the AH and the first couple went fine, now I’m getting a swirly circle on the last purchase, been going for 5 mins now.
I tried to log out and no go. Closed the game in Windows tray, logged back in and can’t get back onto that character “A character with that name already exists”. I can get into game with other toons though.
Same issue for Gurubashi
Is Blizzard aware that there’s a problem, I haven’t seen any updates anywhere
I’m getting the same on Runetotem
same thing on uther
Another update: After several minutes of sitting with the loading bar frozen at roughly 75%, it says character not found for this character.
Attempted to log into another character in another area, Orgrimmar, that I did not log into since the patch started on the same realm, Rexxar. Load bar was stuck on about 75% full for several minutes, went to 100% for several more minutes, and then was able to log in on that character.
Not sure if fixed or if there is something weird going on. Will update more as I see changes.
Edit: Logging out brings back the black character selection screen.
Had the same issue on one character, Bladefist realm, doing stuff in the emerald dream, noticed a lag spike/froze so exited the game to restart and logged back in to a completely blank character screen, greyed out option of entering the world, after waiting a bit my characters came back, tried logging in on two different characters, got stuck in the loading screen both times before getting disconnected from the server. Very odd. Switched to the Moonrunner server where my other characters are, was able to log in and play just fine.
Mine just came back on Arathor.
Same thing on Hakkar. Logged in after work to play, no characters available. When I switch to Blood Furnace, I can log in.
I was wondering the same thing
But I can’t seem to log in
thats what i was doing as well…
Well, my server (Eitrigg) has been dying for years, maybe today is the day it’s been finally laid to rest
hope blizzard can fix this issue soon
zzzz… same on Smolderthorn 
Yup same for me as well on drenden
Just now, the game loaded up as normal and I’m in the game on this character. It loaded the game up at the regular duration it normally takes to get into the game world as opposed to taking several minutes. Not sure if fixed or not, however. I’m on Rexxar.
Update, was able to finally relog back into the game on Bladefist and continue playing, fingers crossed there are no further issues.
Character list came back, tried to log in - no character with that name found.
Now back to blank character screen on Arathor.
/sigh
Just got all the way back in on Eitrigg. Must just be random