OMG! THIS WORKED!!!
Logged on to my son’s computer, got the “character not found” message. Logged out, then got back on my computer, logged in and VIOLA, I’m in!!!
Thank you for this information!!!
Still seeing issues- also noticed that I cannot create a new character without it timing out and it doesn’t seem to register that I’ve unlocked any of the allied races to create a new character. Hope this info helps
Seems to be backend database or database technology issue. Character storage might’ve been migrated, or I’m totally off base. Regardless this will be fixed at some point, rather than rollback teams are likely aggressively working towards a fix.
I got to change xmog, so not having too many issues being stuck at this loading screen. I’m hoping Blizzard updated Character Selection as they have Character Creation
By the light, it finally worked. Nothing special just persistence. If someone at Blizz fixed, thank you. Wanted to make a new character, but will take what I can get and not chance it lol.
I just wanna be able to log into this toon… why is it telling me that a character with that name already exists.
Logout/Login of Bnet account immediately resolved for me, could be coincidence. Or theory above is correct and that process fixed whatever discrepancy existed 
Hope this works for others.
Logging out of Bnet and back in worked for me also!
Ysera here, had the char not found mini ipdate happened, was able to log in but then had to force close game then tried to get back in and char not found again…sigh…
log out and log in worked for me as well! thank you
did not solve my issue 
Same. I used to see all chars on the server screen, now I have to navigate to Mal’ganis and eventually the chars will load. Choose one (any) and loading dumps back to char screen “Character not found”
Deleted WoW Retail Cache File and was able to get in on 1st try. GL
I had the same problem all night on my main account, just swapped to an unnactive wow account on the same bnet, created a level one, logged in, worked. Swapped back to main account, logged in, worked. Hope this can help someone.
There was an update to the battle.net client and now the game works
Tried this, didn’t work either. My character is still in game =/
It did work for me! Thank you so much Blizz!
That’s unfortunate, how does that have anything to do with streamers?
Wife next to me, shes in, me, Character not found after trying every single option.
Delete wtf / cache / interface, reboot, restart, log out, log in. 52nd attempt to log in over various characters and realms…
2 reponses in the last 2 hours from tech support… "yup still working on it, tough s*** - deal with it - we dropped the ball again after months of testing "
Perhaps better software engineers?
Logging out of battlenet and back in solved my issue. Thanks!
Same issue, been about 12 hours, followed all steps on the site, even submitted a bug report that finally went through (first 4 are also probably stuck with “ticket with same name already exists” since 2 of them are still actively processing). Figured it’d go away when less people were on.