Where can I get a more recent WoW client?

[Venkman]

Any stores have 14-day trial discs with client installs newer than September 2005? I'm REALLY not looking forward to patching three years of content (because you can't do it all at once) and the latest disc I could find was from a November 2005 issue of PC Gamer. And I'm pretty certain I can't just convert the WotLK beta client into a retail one after November 13th.

[Montague]

Go to account management, you can download the client from your account screen.

Edit: I'm not sure if you can do this with just a beta account, but if you have even an inactive WoW account you should be able to do it.

[Tale]

If you reinstall from the original discs, what you need is the latest major WoW patch release in its full "1.0-to-current" package. That catches you up to a near-recent version, then you only have a few minor incremental patches to download on top of that. Earlier this year I found what I needed here (confusing due to international language versions and full/incremental versions of each patch): http://games.on.net/filelist.php?app=178&menu=1

At the beginning of this year I *think* I installed the original discs, then the Burning Crusade discs, then a 900Mb patch that took me straight to version 2.4, then I started WoW and let it download another 3 small patches, then it was up-to-date. Looks like now you might be able to go to 3.02 or something instead of 2.4, but I'm not sure.

[cevik]

http://www.wowwiki.com/Patch_mirrors

A list of mirrors to download the client and patches with checksums for each.

[Venkman]

Go to account management, you can download the client from your account screen.

Edit: I'm not sure if you can do this with just a beta account, but if you have even an inactive WoW account you should be able to do it.

I'm already grabbing the beta. Based on your advice I revisited the Account Mgt page and have now grabbed both the basic and BC downloaders too. Long night of a few gigs ahead of me.

Thanks!

[SurfD]

Go to account management, you can download the client from your account screen.

Edit: I'm not sure if you can do this with just a beta account, but if you have even an inactive WoW account you should be able to do it.

I'm already grabbing the beta. Based on your advice I revisited the Account Mgt page and have now grabbed both the basic and BC downloaders too. Long night of a few gigs ahead of me.

Thanks!

Since blizzard can't seem to code a bittorrent client worth spitting on, here is a helpful tip that may speed up your downloads.

I know this works for the Background downloader, not sure where it caches the info for the other downloaders.

if you start the background downloader (mine is located in "/World of Warcraft" main directory), and then kill it immediately, you can check the "/World of Warcraft/Cache" directory for a BackgroundDownload.torrent file, which you can then load into any torrent program of your choice, for a generally much faster and smoother download experience.

There is also a way to extract the torrent file info out of the program itself (the wiki had a page on it) but i found grabbing the cached file to be easier.

[Venkman]

Thanks. What's a good torrent program. I'm that rare breed of geek that hasn't done much with torrents in like, forever.

[Trippy]

uTorrent (small, fast) or Azureus (now calle Vuze, Java based, larger, more features).

I use(d) Azureus personally since on my old slow connection it was better at sustaining transfers, for some reason. uTorrent tended to "stall" a lot on the exact same Torrent. I haven't tried either on my new zippy connection yet since I'm on Comcast and I'm afraid they might try to remotely destroy my computer, or something.

[Venkman]

Thanks. Grabbing Azureus.

Question: I've heard Blizzard's downloader is a crappy Torrent client for years. What makes it so? And why wouldn't they want to fix it (since not doing so has go to be an active decision rather than them being dumb).

[Fordel]

I couldn't tell you why technically. But it's pretty much featureless. It's on, or it's off, the end. It's also seedless most of the time, since once it's done, it closes itself.

It's also the only downloader I've used that needed it's own fancy ports redirected/opened on my router, it will simply not work at any appreciable rate otherwise.


It's like comparing a Golf Cart to a Modern Car. Sure, they both have 4 wheels and a seat, but... 

[Venkman]

Cool.

Think I messed something up.

I installed the main game and patched it all the way to recent (up through 2.4.### or something). Then I tried to log in. It told me I needed to grab the BC client in order to log in. I had that already and decided to install that. That seemed to reset my client to 2.0.### again. Now I try to log in, and after the login screen it quickly downloads something and then pops a message saying the patch cannot be installed, to try again later and maybe I need to reinstall.

So, do I need to reinstall? And if so, should I install the game client, then install BC and then start the download/patch process?

[Fordel]

I have no earthly idea. My only advice is to run the repair tool, or reinstall. I've had a long history of fighting with the patcher, which was only "solved" by a new PC eventually.

The actual Forums and Support Base are entirely useful though, if you feel like digging a bit.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?forumId=11110&sid=1
http://us.blizzard.com/support/index.xml?rootCategoryId=2316&gameId=11

Also a Mac specific tech support forum: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/board.html?sid=1&forumId=11111 if you happen to be on one.

[Selby]

There are 2 clients, the standard and the BC one.  Download the BC one and install that (it's ~1GB) and then manually download the most recent 2.0-2.whatever patch you can find, and then install that.  I did that last time I installed on a new machine a few months back and everything went smoothly.

[Venkman]

Ended up doing what I should have done: Install normal, Install BC, begin patching. Got it all working, thanks!

Also, I don't know if this is new or not, but after downloading/installing WotLK, the patch process was a sequence of download, automatic installs, relaunches, automatic download, automatic install. I haven't had to babysit it at all.