Cataclysm Install DVDFollow

Just a little heads up to those just joining WoW, or people wanting to do what I did:

One of the reasons why I wasn't too distraught over not being able to cancel my pre-ordered hard copies from Gamestop was because I wanted a full, fresh re-install of the game to get rid of all of those old, extra files and save some HDD space and to clean out the pref folders (I keep getting pref bugs like Buffs consolidating when I tell them not to, Auto-Loot turning itself off randomly, etc).

A figured that a good clean-out and re-install would fix some of these issues, or at the very least, 'blow the cobwebs out' so to speak.

After popping the DVD in the computer, and sitting through ~45 minutes of installing, it finally gets done.

I boot the game up and it has to download the launcher. Meh, that's to be expected, I thought.

Then it....

Wants to download SEVEN GIGS of stuff.

Seriously, Blizz? You couldn't have given us two DVDs so that we got a full install with no downloading? That's not exactly the best way to entice new players to join the game; have them install half of the game and download the other half (all 7 GB of it) before they can even log in?

That's a heck of a lot of bandwidth being used up and nowadays more ISPs are putting limits and caps on bandwidth usage. Anyone who has a limit isn't going to want to spend 7GB of that on downloading something that should have already come pre-packaged with the game.

Granted, if you have a 1MB+ connection you might be able to start playing the game early, but eh. Not everyone lives in a city. Broadband is getting more common, but if you live away from urban areas, you probably only have, say 300k/sec or so and trying to download while playing creates all sorts of lag that makes the experience plain undesirable. And then there are people with multiple computers in the household, etc, etc.

So anyone planning on doing what I did, or planning on joining WoW, might want to ask a friend to hook a flashdrive up to their computer or something and just copy the whole stinkin' folder. That only takes 20 minutes or so to copy, instead of 45min install + 7GB download.

Edit: Luckily for me, I was smart enough to merely rename the old World of Warcraft folder to create a backup and was easily able to restore that backup and install just Cata. I preserved the "new" copy by renaming it, I might work on that 7GB here and there on my own time.

Edited, Dec 8th 2010 9:52am by Lyrailis

The prefs are inside of WTF, then?

I wanted to nuke all preferences, old patch files, cache, and re-do the addons folder.



Mine is 20GB but I have lots old patches. I installed ~8GB worth of data and the game wants to DL ~7.

The full install told me it'd take up ~14GB IIRC, so.... I'd say 15GB to account for addons and give a little extra space. Also, the Win7 version seems to need 500MB more for some odd reason. Maybe because it was Win7 64-bit vs WinXP 32-bit?

Back in the day, the two folders with user data and cache were WTF and WTB. I think WTB became Cache, and WTF still exists. I am on my laptop at work so I can't check. Of course there is also the AddOns folder.

Best way to do it is to just rename the folders (I.e. change WTF into WTF_OLD) and load WoW. WoW will automatically create new folders and create the necessary files.

Don't know that I call it a problem, but yeah I do that too.

Would this problem occur if you installed vanilla and the previous expansions first? I can't see why there is a need to download 7gb of patches. If it was that big why not just put it on 2 dvds and increase the price by $5-10?

Anytime I install wow I do it with all the install discs, which is alot for me. I have 5 for vanilla, 4 for BC, 1 for LK, and now 1 for cata. My Vanilla and BC are cd's not DVD's so that is part of it. Still beats downloading all day. If you install with all the discs there is little downloading, at least as of this post.

Some of us are re-installing the game on new comps after launch.. or some people just bought the game Freshly.

Imagine that .....

It had been a year since I last played WoW and had uninstalled it somewheres along the line, so I needed to do a fresh install to start up with Cataclysm. It of course resulted in the laughable situation described above by the OP. I guess that's why Cata only costs $40 instead of $50 like past expansions - the game data provided in the retail copy is incomplete it seems. Or a lot of it is out of date, either way the Cata retail product is a joke. Normally I would expect some minor patching with any new MMO release, but 18 hours downloading 6.8gb? Lol ... I just have to laugh, because if I didn't, I would cry.

Then there you have your answer. The discs were pressed months ago, the data on them is very out of date.
It's not unusual at all for a modern game to have patches on launch day because of how old the discs are when they get to you.

They did redo the entire original world.

Just a curiosity: did anyone actually compare the data from the CD versus that added after the download? Or is this all just bickering over anecdotal speculative stuffs?

Well in that case...



Edited, Dec 10th 2010 2:55pm by someproteinguy

I love leeching the internet at school for 4mb+/sec, makes downloading easy.