Difficult for users to workaround Blizzard bugs when updating characters

[shoogen]

Currently, many users have problems getting their characters properly updated. Are there any improvements we can make to simplify this process for them?

Problems include:

• Pets/Toys/Heirlooms do not update for some players #64
• Some housing decor items are missing from my collection #133
• Transmog API returns incorrect items after Logout (but works after full Exit Game) #76
• In general, not everybody is aware that some APIs require a full "Exit Game" instead of a "Logout"
• This problem is made worse since DfA will not refresh a character if the server detects they haven't logged in since last time. So your character can get "stuck" if you refresh after a Logout but before a full "Exit Game". Constantly refreshing that character over and over will not do anything.

This leads to alot of user frustration, having to login/logout alot and wait around while trying to refresh multiple characters.

Possible solutions:

• Can we split up a character refresh into two parts. 1) Refresh character specific data the same way we do now. 2) Refresh account-wide data separately and keep track of its own updated date.
• Whenever attempting to refresh a character, we should not only check the character's login time, but also see if account-wide data has been updated since last time. And if so, update it.
• Whenever we refresh a character, should we also check if that character is bugged (0 pets/0 toys) and attempt to find and refresh a working character. (Or when possible, use OAuth token to check account-wide endpoint.) Not sure if this is always possible and might waste alot of API calls.
• In addition, might be useful to have an indicator of when a full refresh was done vs. when the character was checked but skipped