What Is This Massive Patch I'm Downloading?

[Vanchatron]

The Blizzard background downloader has just started downloading a massive 2.6gb patch & I'm just wondering what it actually is, considering the game seems to be running fine without it. The SS shows more info:

Screenshot - http://img29.picoodle.com/data/img29/3/9/24/f_untitledm_c1b4e7d.jpg

Thanks.

[Ritsuko]

Its the background patch for Wotlk. They don't have everything on cds of course, so instead of making you dl a 200 hour patch they do it in sections before the release.

If you go to sw you can see them doing construction on the wall where they are putting the SW port to northrend. You can talk to the contractors =D

[Torik]

Also, the patch before WotLK is released will contain the 'generic' (ie don't need expansion to use) content they are introducing with the expansion. This is quite a bit of data so they put out most of it out now so people can pre-download rather than having everyone try to download it at the same time on patch day.

If you wish you can disable the Background Downloader and instead download the entire patch on patch day.