World of Waiting: The Boring Crusade

After 10 months of absence (and whilst I can’t log into LOTRO for the millionth time) I decided to reinstall WoW today and make use of Blizzard’s 10 day free trial for The Burning Crusade.

Of course, since I’m working on an entirely new system, that meant digging out the old CDs and reinstalling from scratch.

I didn’t mind waiting half an hour whilst 2.5GB of data was copied from the antiquated 4CD install set. I was pretty much expecting a major patch process afterwards, so I resigned myself to the 450MB automated download.

Two hours later, ready for some old-time noob-zone smiting, I clicked on “Play”, and the game started.

Then it stopped.

Apparently the 450MB it had just downloaded wasn’t the most recent patch, so it started the patching process again, upgrading to the magic “version 2.0.3″.

Only… 750MB to go.

Another 4 hours passed, with not much more to do than watch a progress bar. So, I left it running and got some work done, had lunch, watched a movie, did some more work, and went shopping.

Finally, 6 hours and 40 minutes after first clicking on “install”, the patch finished, and I was ready to play.

Logged in. Agreed to stupid click-wrap license of dubious legality. Clicked “play”.

Loading… loading…

Patching?

Yes, after 6 hours of downloading patches, WoW needed more electrons from the internet

At this point I left the computer entirely for the next 6 hours, because having downloaded 1.2GB of patch data, WoW was now automatically downloading another 1.25GB. That’s a total of 2.45GB on top of the four 700MB CDs originally installed.

It’s now about 12 hours after I started installing, and I’ve just watched the introduction movie for Burning Crusade. Logged-in, full of anticipation and desperate to start rolling a new character. Maybe spend some time playing this game that in the course of the last two years I’ve spent some £230 on.

But no. It couldn’t be that simple. Because after downloading and installing that whopping 1.25GB patch, showing me the introduction movie, letting me log into the game for the fourth time, WoW needs another patch.

This time it’s 219MB. Almost nothing in comparison to what’s gone before. Another 45 minutes and it should be here.

But after nearly 13 hours, I’m not particularly sure I want to play WoW any more.

Maybe I’ll just uninstall it again.

Update: 15 hours in and - you’ve guessed it - another patch. That’s five separate patches to install this game.

This one’s only 19MB,  but once again there was no warning whatsoever until I’d actually logged into the game. Seriously though, what would it take for Blizzard to implement a simple version check on the game launcher that states what version you are currently running and compare it to the latest patch?