New to WOW, trying to get it up and running.

[explosivzkick]

Hello all. first time posting on this website. I played Everquest for on/off 6 years, so im familiar with the mmorpg platform, and i enjoy these type of games.

ok, so the problem im having (that may not even be a problem) is that i bought WoW (vanilla only, i believe it is referred to as) and i downloaded the contents of the game dvd which was around 5gb. then i clicked on my desktop icon for wow, and it brought up the launcher. it then proceeded to go through a patch for about 15 seconds or so, and it brings me back to the blizzard installer? is it supposed to do this? or was it supposed to keep on downloading patches? i only want the original WoW content for now as im still trying it out. But i clicked install World of Warcraft button on the blizzard installer again. and it is WAYYY slower than downloaded from the cd. i've been downloading for an hour and am only at 3%... and im not even sure if im supposed to be downloading again. any help would be appreciated it, this whole ordeal kinda has me boggled, and i'd like to get into the game as soon as possible.

[clevins]

Hmm. If you bought a copy of vanilla wow (and it's really vanilla, i.e. 1.x) you'll need to download a lot of patches. You might want to download the trial version from Blizzard and then just use the CD key to activate it. Or you can grab a cumulative patch from bigdownload.com or another patch site. Do be careful with files you download from non-Blizzard sources though... scan them for viruses, etc.

[Erinion]

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe everyone playing Warcraft runs exactly the same client. This means that even if you are playing "vanilla" WoW, your client will contain all the data files for Outland (the Burning Crusade expansion) and Northrend (Wrath of the Lich King expansion).

It's your account details that determine which content you have access to.

So if you've installed vanilla WoW only, you still need to patch it to the current client - which is going to be around another 8-10gb of data.

[clevins]

Erinion is correct. The client is the same... even if you don't pay to unlock TBC and Wrath, your client needs to be 3.11a.

[explosivzkick]

ahh. so basically i should download the trial cliente, and just put in the key then and that should work? ill give it a shot

[Dark Matter]

no no.

Download the FULL Wrath of the Lich King client. Even if you only want to play vanilla and bought the Discs from a store.

The DL you get from Blizzard will be the latest version available and you will have mimimal patching to do. It's about 6-7GB and will probably now come ready patched to 3.1

You can go to your local WOW website and enter the key when you create your account. Then, when you log onto the server it will know that you've only paid for vanilla access and adjust what you can see and do accordingly.

I know this because I had a Scroll of Resurrection cast on me, and I've bought a new PC since I last played. Blizzard Tech told me to DL the WotLK game from them even though I've only paid for TBC content. Once I hit 70 they told me to get a 10 day free trial of WotLK and then pay for full content later!

DM