The Background Downloader in Action
by Elizabeth Harper 
Jun 20th 2006 at 10:43PM
Today's release of patch 1.11 was the first chance we had to see how the new background downloader application would help us on patch day. The full patch file ended up being about 150MB, but for me, the background downloader had previously snagged 127MB of that, making the patch download fairly quick and painless. Of course patch day itself wasn't completely painless - the servers came up a few hours later than anticipated and the login server was sluggish when things first started coming online, but over-all the patching process seemed to go fairly smoothly. Did anyone have any negative experiences with the patch downloading process today?Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Realm Status
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
obo Jun 21st 2006 12:42AM
I don't know anyone who didn't have problems (four people on five systems, 4 PCs and 1 Mac, specifically.)
I trashed my background downloader app completely when they started preloading the patch because it was wrecking my software firewall and causing hardware crashes as a result, and WoW isn't important enough to me to muck with my security software. A friend with a Mac and PC got hung up at 83% for seven hours (on dialup!) on both systems. Two other friends with broadband got hung up at 83% and 88%. The 83 percenter stuck it out and was rewarded an hour later with a full download; the 88 percenter quit after two hours of waiting.
So, out of five systems, one is actually patched, and her server is still down.
But I _hear_ it's good!
moonfaer Jun 21st 2006 12:51AM
I had no problems with this patch - suprisingly, since I've had trouble with every OTHER patch before. Only took about 5 minutes to get everything downloaded and installed.
Now if only my server would stay up for more than three minutes....
monkeywraith Jun 21st 2006 1:45AM
background downloader was never a problem until i wanted to run teamspeak. it was hogging too much bandwidth so i opened the downloader and told it not to automatically download in the background (a very simple option to find on one of the pull down menus).
i have to agree with you though, getting most of the patch beforehand was pretty nice ... they should just severely limit the bandwidth it uses ... not like there is a rush to get stuff in the background before the patch is out anyway.
kang Jun 21st 2006 1:58AM
I may be the only person who used the background downloader and didn't have problems with it, despite being behind a hardware firewall, a router, AND a software firewall. Though I may be discounting the fact that I set it to go before I went to breakfast this morning and spent an hour downstairs before I came back up to a fully installed patch...
Fen Jun 21st 2006 2:27AM
Uh, the background downloader has been around since 1.10, and would've grabbed files for the 1.10.5 patch. That's what happened to me.
Today, I was stuck on 83% for an indertminable amount of time (I was out of the house all day) but when I came back it had finished!
Shalom Jun 21st 2006 3:21AM
No problems here.
Doug Anderson Jun 21st 2006 4:31AM
Like many others, i was stuck at 83%. once it was stuck, i looked at the details tab and it was moving very slooooowly. 45 min later, it finished up and i was in. My friend was not so lucky, and was hung up and it never did finish for him. We both have cable, and both have firewalls, but two different dl experiences.
Lori Jun 21st 2006 7:13AM
It took me 2hrs to finish the download from 83%. A couple others in my guild did it in 15min. I have broadband. The background downloader did give me lots of grief being frequently DCed in AV untill I figured out what was happening and disabled it. Would have been mich happier had they told us about it ahead of time.
fcodc :: Exploding Barrels Jun 21st 2006 7:29AM
Got stuck on 83% for about 15 minutes, then my download speed averaged at 10kbps on a broadband connection. What's up with that?
PodMonkeys Jun 21st 2006 7:34AM
Mine got stuck at 127mb, so I killed it, started an http download from a mirror, and went on to other things. (yes, there are other things than WoW :P ) The download finished during the night, so we'll see about manually patching today.
espike Jun 21st 2006 7:44AM
I take it this is the same issue that's now happening on the european realms caused by the usual blizzard error: not enough capacity.
My downloader can't connect to the tracker, which isn't to strange when u considere several million ppl trying to connect to it.
However, as far as i analysed this downloading tool: it also isn't searching for peers without a tracker, which gives us the current problem.
Newt Jun 21st 2006 8:29AM
Same here, stuck at 127mbs (84%) getting a 'the tracker is not responding' message. To make it even worse the WoW europe web page is down (or being overloaded by others with same problem).
Davrin Jun 21st 2006 9:24AM
I got home from work at 6:30 or so last night, so I wasn't able to jump on the download before the raging mobs of other players attacked all the mirrors. When I did finally get the file, somehow it had become corrupt. The repair tool began to run and went for about 20 minutes before telling me that "The file to repair is too large. Reinstall." AFTER digging out my discs (no small task if you'd see my desk... hah) I finally got WoW reinstalled. I attempted using the blizzard downloader to get the full 1.11 patch, but it was only downloading it at about 10 KB/s, on broadband. So I went to filefront and waited in line and, 45 minutes later, I had the file. I went to patch it, and, go figure, it's corrupt again.
One thing I'll hand to Blizzard is that their page on getting the damn patches installed does help. I had to close out all processes that I wasn't using, redownload the patch, and then patch it. I finally got it done at about 11 pm, just in time to go to bed, since I have work today.
4 1/2 hours for a simple 151 MB patch.
GG, Blizzard.
Dave N. Jun 21st 2006 10:11AM
World of Warcraft - $39.99
Monthly subscription - $15
Attempting to patch six million users in one day - priceless
PsyClerk Jun 21st 2006 10:15AM
I had to disable all my security software before the patch would install. Otherwise, my machine would lock up and I'd have to do a hard reset.
Downloading was not a problem, as I have a FilePlanet sub. The Blizzard Downloader is a nice idea, but due to my router, I could only get it to run on one computer at a time.
Lummox Jun 21st 2006 1:38PM
It took me nine minutes to download the remainder of the patch and install everything. The background downloader did previously annoy me in that it verifies what it has downloaded every single time I log in, but being in the ISP industry, I could appreciate their goals and always left it on under the assumption that what they were doing would work. Went perfectly for me. :)
Then again, I play on a MacBook Pro, so there really aren't any delays in downloading the patch between myself and the 8 other Mac users who play WoW. :P
Ceej Jun 21st 2006 2:12PM
I had a pretty good experience.
I run 2 pc's behind a router. The first pc zipped straight up to 83%, hung there for minute or two, then continued the download, done in 10 minutes. The patch went smoothly in about 10 minutes as well.
The second pc went to 83% and hung there for too long. I went into my router and played with the ports, closing them to the first pc and opening them to the second, restarted the download and ...done! Same as the first.
A bit of a pain, but all in all I was pleased. Could have been a lot worse.
Jurgie Jun 22nd 2006 1:31PM
To Lummox,
Make that 7 other mac users, i just took the created files from my pc and used the updater to apply them. Saves a lot of time when you need to update 5 comps in the same building.