Error browsing characters

Keep getting the following when browsing characters:

{
"error": {
"code": 3,
"message": "Rate limit exceeded; You are requesting your character list too frequently. Please try again later."
}
}


Why is there a rate limit to browse characters at all?

I'm just trying to see the gear each character has and sometimes the character list is empty, sometimes the characters are shown to be wearing no gear at all.