Quote:I've been downloading the software in chunks (mostly overnight) for the past few days and this is my progress. 56k modem users are out of luck using this distribution method, unless they want to tie up their phone line for a week or so.
This is actually a very big problem with the system. I am limited to only a phone connection to get the download and with this BitTorrent system. I am lucky if I can get even a consistent 3 KB/s download that will last long enough to get more than about 4 Megs of data at a time. There are a great many end users out there that will be in the same boat as myself. At the rate that I have been able to sustain my estimate is that it will take me at least 3 weeks of putting up with this type of crap (constantly restarting the download every hour or two) to finally get this beta.
Typically I am ending up with doing more uploading than downloading each session (who is out there there that really needs the ~8% that I have managed to get?). Also in the time that it takes me to download about a 1.5 meg chunk, I could have downloaded a 6 to 8 meg file from some other more direct sources. With this kind of performance, I can see why some are complaining that the version that Blizzard is forcing us to use has some serious perfomance problems. One group that I saw listed that they used a different version of BT to do a faster download of a single copy amongst only six of them, than it would have taken if they had continued to use the Blizzard version.
Quote:An alternate distribution method (mail?) is hinted at by Blizzard for future phases, but for now this is how it's done.
Possibly, but they seem to have some vested interest in forcing this to work, so as of now there is no other method being supplied to users that are in the beta but cannot get to do a download. There appear to be quite a number of beta testers that also behind university firewalls that are also in position that they cannot take part in the testing due to having the download ports completely blocked.
Currently my best hope is that sometime next week I might be able to take my machine to a friends and use his cable connection to do the download.