How to fix ‘error retrieving character list’ in WoW

Numerous errors can occur while playing online games like World of Warcraft. One of the more common ones players will stumble upon is the “error retrieving character list” message, preventing you from logging into the game or choosing a character to play.

If you’ve played World of Warcraft long enough, you’ve probably had this happen to you at least once or twice, and sometimes the solution to your problem is as simple as logging off and logging back in. Other times, the fix is a little bit more complicated. We’ll run you through a few different tricks to figure out why you’re getting that error and how to handle it.

How to fix the ‘error retrieving character list’ in World of Warcraft

The first step is to ensure your internet connection is good and the servers are working well in WoW. If the servers are struggling overall, that might be the real problem, and it explains why you get the “error retrieving character list” prompt when choosing any of your characters.

You can confirm this by visiting the World of Warcraft realm status page. If your realm, or all the realms, are offline, it’s a good indicator the issue is not on your end, and you need to wait for the Blizzard development team to take care of things. While you wait, if your internet is working, it doesn’t hurt to see if you can get any Twitch drops for WoW.

You can shut down WoW while waiting and boot it back up to see if the servers work, giving the developers time to root out the problems. While attempting to reboot the game, we’d advise you to check with Blizzard’s customer service social media pages for real-time updates. You can get updates from them by going to the BlizzardCS Twitter account.

Add-Ons

Add-ons are one of the best ways to enhance your gaming experience in WoW, but sometimes, they can cause trouble because they’re effective mods for the game that can cause technical issues.

If you’re getting this error message, one of the first things you should do after restarting your game, and maybe even your computer or router, is to disable your add-ons to see if one of them is potentially causing the problem. If that’s the issue, you can manually turn each back on individually until you find the problem child among them.

Cache Folder

Considering this requires you to go through your computer files and is slightly more intrusive, we recommend saving this as a last resort.

Some players have noted that issues with your cache folder for the game can cause this issue. We haven’t had this particular problem, so I’m going based on what we’ve heard and read on the topic.

You can find your cache folder by opening your World of Warcraft file on your computer. You should be able to find a cache folder inside the larger WoW folder. If you open it up and delete everything inside it, that can often resolve the issue.

Usually, this error is due to internet connection issues, or it’s on Blizzard’s end and will be resolved within a couple of hours. In either of those instances, the solution is significantly simpler than navigating through your computer files.