Posts with tag background downloader

According to MVP Schwick on the EU forums, several different anti-virus scanners have started detecting the Blizzard background downloader and some patch files as malware. With as much trouble as you can get into with certain kinds of malware, this sort of alert would be bound to panic anyone. However, this one has been confirmed by Blizzard as a false alarm. For now, be sure to download the latest updates to your anti-virus scanner, and if it detects any of the following, it's likely a false positive:

• Trojan-PSW.Win32.WOW
• R/PSW.WOW.RG.3
• Trojan horse PSW.Generic4.TUV

However, if, after upgrading your anti-virus software, you're still getting virus messages? Report it on the tech support forums. As Blizzard EU rep Torzelyn says:

Updating the Virus Scanners is removing the Trojan alert, but if your particular scanner is still flagging it as a trojan, please don't patch the game just yet. I'm sorry but I'm just wanting to be cautious. Although it appears to be a false positive, as with Kaspersky, AntiVir etc.. updating the definitions is solving the problem, I don't want to just say 'use the files' because there could still be a problem somewhere.

[Via BlizzPlanet]

Ah... the patch distribution system. You know it and... er... love it? Well... maybe not on that last part. Blizzard has a unique system of patch distribution that I often find problematic on patch day. If you can jump on and start downloading early in the day (out of prime time), you'll often find the download quick and painless. But if you get off work, drive through traffic, come home, and login? You're much more likely to be met by a screen similar to the above. The workaround to this scenario for many seems to be grabbing patch files from 3rd party sites, but I always wonder why the patching process has to be such a headache. Of course, the background downloader application was introduced to solve some of these problems -- by allowing you to download the bulk of the patch in advance. However, it doesn't always seem to make the experience any better. But that's just my opinion -- what do you think of Blizzard's patching system?

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?

If you happened to attempt to multi-task while playing Warcraft today, you may have noticed the Blizzard Background Downloader running, downloading a file with an unusually generic name of "wow-patch."  So was some kind of patch released today?  Well... no.  However, there's an official post explaining exactly what is happening here.  Before the background downloader was implemented, on patch day millions of people would be attempting to grab the patch at the same time - and my experience with this has been entirely negative.  With the background downloader, whenever you log on to play, you'll be checking for updated files and start downloading them (very slowly - as to not interrupt your play-time).  So as Blizzard finalizes parts of the next patch, the downloader is already grabbing them, which means that come patch day, you should already have most of the patch, making getting patched up quick and painless.  I guess we'll wait and see how well it works in the end...!