It's here....

[Roane]

Some people made Torrent files available for download from their sites. Did you try one of those, or only the one you extracted yourself? I had more success with other people's for some reason. Not sure what the changes are there.

[MongoJerry]

I stopped and restarted the download this morning, and my download speed jumped from 5 kB/sec to 40 kB/sec. You might try restarting if you're still getting slow download speeds. Don't worry about wasting your efforts from before. The downloader will pick up where it left off.

[Tal]

Well so much for me playing WoW tonite. I didn't see that the patch had been released until I was already at work and have had a heinously bad time trying to download anything through the Blizzard BT and this version actually seems worse from what accounts I have read. That also seems to leave out playing tomorrow morning on my one morning off as I will likely still be babysitting this download. I'm also a bit reluctant to try out the alternate download as there have been some who have had to do a complete reinstall after download. At this point I would be willing to pay to download it off of a place like fileplanet... I hate blizzard's bit torrent with a passion.

[Roane]

The alternate download hits the same file as the standard one. I don't think that's what caused the issue. Then again, it worked with no problems for me, so I'm standing on the sunny side of that particular issue. I'm happy to help anyone with it, if I can, to get you guys in and playing sooner. Never have figured out how to get P2P file transfers to work through my firewall or I'd just send it to you that way.

[JustAGuy]

I HATE Bit torrent.

I doubt you hate bittorrent. You probably aren't set up properly, so it's frustrating. BitTorrent is a beautiful, ingenious protocol; Blizzard's implementation of it is quite poor. The last downloader was much better.

Luckily, there's a way around the current problems.
Torrent file for Patch

That appears to be a valid torrent, and the file size matches, although you never can trust a non-blizzard file. I'm going to tempt fate when it finishes downloading... Using a third party BitTorrent client, you can set you upstream to whatever you like, which will in turn cause your download speed to increase. The key here is to have a properly working BitTorrent client, that is properly routed and what not. Routing is key -- my DLINK router automatically forwards BitTorrent ports by default (what a wonderful device).

Good news is that I'm getting over 150k/s downloading, and my upload speed is capped at around 40k/s, so I won't saturate my upstream (causing poor download speeds). My line is capable of uploading at nearly 80k/s, but I have to leave some for the other net users in the house...

Good luck with your downloading.

[Thenryb]

I used the links provided in the post referenced by Lem. I first downloaded the PE file. Then I downloaded BitTornado and put it into my WOW folder. Then I opened PE, pointed it toward the Blizz downloader, selected 108 and saved the resulting file to my desktop. I then renamed that file to "Blizz.torrent" I then fired up BitTornado by pointing to the only exe I saw in that folder after which I got some kind of error message. I was simply and literally following directions with no real understanding of what I was doing and why. People like me need to stick to default methods even if they suck, I guess.

[Tal]

I doubt you hate bittorrent. You probably aren't set up properly, so it's frustrating. BitTorrent is a beautiful, ingenious protocol; Blizzard's implementation of it is quite poor. The last downloader was much better.

You're right. I hate Blizzard's BitTorrent. Though when I originally connected to the server I was getting 2kbs downloads and 512kbs uploads it has now (after I went through Blizzard's configurations) uploading at 14-23kbs and downloading at 40-45kbs. It should also be noted that this is the first time that Blizzard has provided these kind of detailed instructions to assist with Downloads.

[MongoJerry]

I finish downloading! Woohoo! And yet, the realm servers are down, while Blizzard fixes some server-side bugs. So, if you're still downloading, don't worry. You haven't missed anything.

[DeeBye]

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx...&p=1#post218737

This post tells you how to use the Blizzard's supplied tracker with REAL bittorrent systems. Granted, it's a bit of a headache, but I am now downloading at 50kb/s up from 0!

That thread has been nuked, but I managed to find a copy of it from another website

     Ok, we'll see how long these instructions last before they're removed, but here's a quick HOWTO for getting the .torrent file for the patch and using BitTornado to download it:

    1) Get the trial of PE Explorer from http://www.heaventools.com/download.htm?r1=pex_nm

    2) Install PE Explorer, run it and open up BlizzardDownloader.exe from your WoW directory.

    3) Go to View -> Resources. Expand the TORRENT item, right click on one of the resources (I used 108) and go to Save Resource As. Save it to your desktop.

    4) Rename the file you save as to something with a .torrent extension (I used blizz.torrent)

    5) Load the .torrent file up in your Bittorrent client.

    Now, I use BitTornado, and it had a problem with the tracker URL in the torrent file (I assume Blizzard has modified the format for their own purposes). The .torrent you get from the EXE has the following announce url:

    http://12.129.233.80:3724/announce|ht...1:3724/announce

    Under Bittorrent's Advanced dialog I was able to use External Announce button to put in each of the announcers one at a time (http://12.129.233.80:3724/announce and then http://12.129.233.81:3724/announce)

    I was getting about 20k up and down before, and I'm already getting 120k down and filling my upstream.

    To Blizz: Sorry if you don't want people doing this, but I don't believe you've ever publicly stated that we MUST use your modified BT client. But now that you've removed the CD-Key requirement from your client, I see it as just being crippled. 3rd party BT clients are FAR better.

    Good luck everyone!

I haven't yet tried this, but I am going to right after I finish typing this because after having Blizzard's BitTorrent Downloader run for the last 11 hours I managed to get a whopping 97 MBs of the patch.

It boggles my mind that WoW's bittorrent downloader seems to be getting WORSE with each and every "upgrade".

[--Pete]

Hi,

I finished the download this morning, but both servers have been down for a large part of the day. And even when they were up, there were problems (like no critters spawning and those that were there could not be attacked).

So far, Graysnow (male Tauren druid) has gotten to level !!3!! -- wow, pretty good for one day of play, eh?

So, yeah, anyone that hasn't finished the download yet, don't worry. You aren't missing much. ;)

--Pete

[Roane]

Well, Baku, the Tauren Hunter, is up and running on the Beta server -- except he's not running right now since the server is down.

I've still got one character on the Horde side that can invite into the guild, so once its up and running, go ahead and poke Baku and I'll switch or whatever, if it's needed.

[Lissa]

Some interesting changes....

Looks like now there is absolutely no reason to get Herbalism if you plan to go Enchanter and Tailor. Enchanter has been changed now so that you disenchant items of green or higher to get stuff to make things. This means that Ori will be giving up Herbalism to concentrate specifically on Tailor and Enchanting now (means she's really close to Artisan skill in tailor).

So, the gather/trade combos now appear to be

Herb/Alchemy

Skinning/Leather working

Mining/Blacksmithing

Mining/Engineering

Tailor, Enchanting, Cooking, and First Aid no longer will need a gather skill to function (just kill mobs).

Fishing will only be needed for fun and making Water Breathing potions now.



Another thing, since Ori is so close to 47, I'm gonna finish that off along with the quests in SV proper before switching over (Arlisse is lv 18 after all and Roaringwind is lv 10).

[MongoJerry]

Fishing will only be needed for fun and making Water Breathing potions now.

Don't forget Fire Oil for use in Fire Protection Potions and many other recipes. Also, I fished up a lot of recipes in the last push. It'll be interesting to see if they enabled fishing in some of the higher level areas and/or added artisan fishing. Neriad has 225 fishing right now, and I'm curious to try out high level fishing when it's available.

[DeeBye]

I'm getting a solid 3 KB/s download rate now. I'll see you guys in a few weeks.

[Saxywoo]

You're did better than I am. I'm having problems getting a single download session to get more than 75 megs. Coming in at a distant second of 45 megs, and then an even further margin of 25 megs. But the least that I got was 127kb....

*sigh*

[MongoJerry]

I'm getting a solid 3 KB/s download rate now. I'll see you guys in a few weeks.

I have a wacky long-shot idea. Last night, when I was getting download times like that, I turned off the Internet Connection Firewall that comes with Windows XP, and after I restarted the download, I was getting about double the rate. I switched back and forth between having it on and having it off, and the effect seemed to be real. I admit that it could've been a coincidence, but I don't know how bittorent actually works. It's possible that the firewall (such as it is) was blocking some of the ports or connections that bittorrent wanted to use.

Give it a try and see. And don't forget to turn your firewall back on when you're done.

[Saxywoo]

QUOTE 
I'm getting a solid 3 KB/s download rate now. I'll see you guys in a few weeks. 

I have a wacky long-shot idea. Last night, when I was getting download times like that, I turned off the Internet Connection Firewall that comes with Windows XP, and after I restarted the download, I was getting about double the rate.

Wohoo! The potential for 6 KB/s!

I was reading the above and it made me laugh when I really needed a good strong laugh. Thank you. I"ll give your suggestion a try when I get the chance. Then I can join the throng of people waiting to get back into the game....

[DeeBye]

Okay, I'm finally in again. Well, I was for 5 minutes until the server died.

EggSalad, Undead Mage

[LavCat]

Meanwhile I am at 537 MB, so I figure I have at least another day to go.

Plus, my system is becoming more unstable. Most recently it locked up while displaying the WoW terms of service. I owe an apology to Ruvanal and the others who have tried to play with me in the last two weeks.

Not sure what the problem is, but I suspect the motherboard (SuperMicro P3T-DE6). I can make the system lock up reliably by runing four instances of a little OpenGL program I wrote and doing some disc activity.

I have swapped out three different video cards, two hard drives, two sets of SCSI cables, and two different operating systems (2000 and XP). I have rearranged the memory and used the DIMM's in different pairs. I have run Microsoft's WinDiag memory test exhaustively.

I am open to suggestions. Not much else to do during the download.

[Saxywoo]

Well, it's been 10 minutes and I'm still waiting to connect to clients.

This is sooooooooo agrivating..... I'm at 721MB of 753!