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Patch 3.0.2 Issues Galore

RAWRWow.  What a mess the Echoes of Doom patch has been.  I do not know about the rest of you, but I have had a hell of a time with the latest content patch.  Blizzard Entertainment warned us that the maintenance would be extended, but my main server experienced over 12 hours of down time. Then it was hit with shoddy performance when the realm finally came up.  In fairness, I would rather take the downtime now, than when all the new content from Wrath of the Lich King goes live.  Of course, that is the exact reason Blizzard does these patches ahead of time, to work out the kinks.

My server being down was only half the battle though.  I don't think I have mentioned this before, but I actually play World of Warcraft on three separate computers.  Keeping the WoW installations on the myriad of computers I have is difficult enough for common play (no, I don't want to carry around my WoW installation on an external harddrive).  So you can imagine how annoying it is to go through the motions of patching and reinstalling addons on three computers for a major content patch.  Tools like  the BLASC Client can only do so much.

My two Windows XP boxes patched up nicely, although I had to transfer the patch from one box to the other because a download was corrupt.  Thankfully, Blizzard's repair tool managed to revert the MMORPG to 2.0.0 rather than having to reinstall everything.  Things went smoothly after that.

My Windows Vista 64-bit box has been, and continues to be, a bit more difficult though.  I have the User Access Controls disabled - because they suck - and still get harassed by Blizzard's installer telling me to move the files to a public directory.  I told it to do what it wants and it failed to copy data from the original installation location into the public area.  I figured it was a PEBKAC issue and tried again, this time not moving the files.  Failed again with much the same error, unable to copy data.

I then did a whole bunch of dumb things like copied the patch files into the installation folder, ran it as administrator, ran it as administrator while on one foot and ran it as administrator while I played The Witcher.  At this point I was worried about the installation as a whole, thinking that the failures may just cause a chain reaction of destruction.  Double-clicked the repair tool (as admin, while I prayed to Pagan gods) and got reverted to 2.0.0 on the Vista box.

It took me awhile, but I finally gave up in frustration and began to download a new copy of the patch.  Hours later, in fact, it ended up being early this morning, it completed and installed correctly.  Looks like I was blaming Vista for another corrupted download.  Sorry Microsoft!

Things are up and running on all of my computers now, and I have begun taking a hard look at which specs to select for my Rogue and Priest.  I think I am going to roll with a healer Priest from now until level 80, so that should be different.  How did the conversion to the Wrath of the Lich King's launch screen - which rocks by the way - go for all of you?

Reader Comments (74)

wait a minute, i thought mounts would be a spell starting in the new patch. mines still in my inventory. is it only when you but the expansion?

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterDavid

it took a while for it to boot up. Nut once it started, it went downhill. Lag was terrible, and my addOns were screwing up the game like MAD!. so i ended up replacing mmost of them, but its still pretty screwy.. :(

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered Commentersolauran

I was off that day from school and all i wanted to do was play wow since seven in the morning. I waited and waited with nothing to do...then well all the other servers got up before mine and it was 9:45 pm when my server was finally up and i still dont understand what is a good warrior spec.

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterJosh

Everything went just fine for us.

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterJackaby and Rakaro

wow im surprise my computer is usually slow but i got through the patchs in just about an hour( the last2% took awile though xD)

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterJustin

since when was goggins a member of the icarly cast? lolz

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered Commenterhiikus

Umm i got a question? if i uninstall World of Warcraft, when i install it again will it still load fast?

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterKyle

Everything updated smoothly for me. But, my server had to have been one of the last ones running which was pretty crappy. Also, I logged on today and re-spec'd, starting getting into the changes and checking out new stuff. Then my server booted me right in the middle of a bad area. Hey, but good times!

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterKrowtz

My favorite problem now is the PETs tab is apparently broken and everyone is calling people newbs because they can't find their mounts after the update, because they really are gone. I have my Wolpertinger and Epic flying mount in the pets tab. The rest of my mounts and pets are all mia, not in my bags or the bank. While looking for answers in the forums I came across quite a few that had subject that sounded like people with similar experiences click the link only to find out the posts had been deleted. Makes you wonder if maybe they could focus more on a fix and less on the PR trouble of their epic fail. This has to be the worst rollout I can remember, maybe one of these days they will get it right.

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterPauldy

When we -- my sister and I, since we share a computer -- got the first opportunity to get the patch yesterday, downloading patch 3.0.1 took at least 3.5 hours and another hour to install. Patch 3.0.2 was faster, but still slow.

And all that was while my computer kept saying that it was behind a firewall, even though I had all possible firewalls set to ignore the updater.

Anyway, so it's around 7pm PDT when we were finally (kind of) able to access our account. The login page looked sweet and ran well, but it wasn't until another hour later that we could retrieve our character list. So, in all, that was somewhere around 16-18 hours total of downtime for Malfurion.

The next burst of craziness was when my sister logged onto her main, we found out that the world server for Kalimdor was down and there were some zone issues for Outland. My sister stayed up until around 2am PDT, but Kalimdor wasn't accessible until approx. 7am PDT this morning. Ever since then, it's been Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms taking turns on going down.

While I'm not going to go on a rant against Blizzard, I'm am feeling quite displeased with all of this. I can only hope that when WotLK is released, things will go much smoother.

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterAlayea

Oh, and I forgot to add that if you're planning on taking a zeppelin... Take your eq off so that if the zepp disappears on you, ya won't run up a repair bill.

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterAlayea

Honestly? No problems what so ever.

Got booted off the server once or twice, but was back up in a few minutes. And I honestly don't notice any addon changes since i play a war most often (and plan too for al ong time to come).

Oh, and had 1 last awesome Kara Clear HAZZAH with my guild. Went smooth as silk, people Love the new changes (as do i), And each boss died in less than a minute. lol

In short, once u play on a single comp that just works for ya, yeah, no problems to be found.

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterNextgener

I have a Mac from three years ago, and it doesn't really like the new loading screen. My server, Executus, was down forever, so I decided to do something crazy and reformat my computer. Bye bye everything I've accumulated in the past three years. I would've backed up a few things, but I don't know how to partition my hard drive. So I'm just re-downloading everything I need, including WoW. I'm so glad I have FiOS...

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterShaun

My Server (Eitrigg) was down about 2 hrs longer than they said it would, after that I was booted off 3-4 times during play.

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterGarviel

Yea... I was unable to log onto Executus at all, though I was able to get on my old server, Farstriders, without much issues, got me a Devilsaur for a pet, went to Kara, got my T4 gloves... :D on the down side, Kara is no harder than Heroic Shattered Halls now... I was actually looking forward to doing some damage.

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterVên

typical, the second a new proffession is released theres 100's of people powerleveling it to the max an AH prices going sky high, minor glyph's on earthern ring (euro) are selling for 300G or more, its all getting a bit crazy lol

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterMightyGibbon

Silvermoon was bugged horribly, many npcs were only half there, stuff was half missing, and I lost over 15 mounts, and 15 or so pets, including rare and difficult to replace ones like mojo, spirit of competition, and a complete set of brewfest mounts :(

I have achivements for all of them too, so I'm hoping i can get them replaced. It's not a visibility issue, its a byproduct of server crashing after I logged in and learned v.v

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterOzzel's Cousin Fred

@MightyGibbon

Then refuse to enable those scalpers by not buying their wares. That's the only solution.

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterAlayea

I CANT EVEN GET THE F#####G PATCH !!!!

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered Commentersirbob

OMG i now have to reinstall the whole game cuz the patch installed but then didnt let me on ... i restarted and then there was no application to open wow

im still installing the game now i hope it will work

i also has Vista which is suckish

bleh.

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterDillon

and im on executus.. Elment

my retrieving character list will never show me my characters...

i have all the same problems with it as the other comments... i hate it

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterDillon

k i got on fine, but now when i am on, my chat function doesnt work. it will show me the guild message of the day, but nothing else. when i /s the bubble still comes over my head but nothing appears on the chat log. i wish i could petition a gm, but they use the chat function to talk. if anyone knows how to fix my problem that would be great

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered Commenterarcanepwnage

wow looks like i got of easy all i got were problem with excesing my characters i dowload took about an hour or so i got on wow oround 6 o clock the first i did was go on my hunter but i didnt get to long to do anything realy as the world was down not for long maybe like 5 minets maybe less after i finished wit hmy hunter i got disconected teh my server was down when for about 1/2 an hour than i loged druid i learned the new abiltys piced a spec and try out in acouple of duels than went on my mage and work o nhim for the rest the night the lags were terible but i delt with i live and brief on QH i havent the chance to fix it so i havent bin leveling i spent today working my hunter i got the hang of new BM ran acouple of ran H ramparts suprisly easy to find a group and teh dungeon it self ran AB and AV i allmsot achieved 300k damage i was 2000 points way when aliance lost and for these who havent gotten to play yat cherr up iam more than the new contents will make up for it

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered Commentercocopuffs

Well, let's see...Had most of the patch dl'd prior to Tuesday, got up about 9A ST, opened WoW Launcher about 10mins later, hit play, DL began, went outside had a smoke, came back DL was complete, install 1/2 way complete. Already knew servers would be down for 12hrs of maintenance so no shocker there when I couldn't get past login screen. Fortunately for me at 3P ST (lunch), game was up, server was up. Opened WoW Matrix, began AddOn Updates, still updating today. Running Vista NO PROBLEMS, Woot. Yes I may be a noob, but unlike most I know how to read and expected the servers to have issues, and have remained as much in the loop as possible since the Test Realm opened.

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterTwest

I did a Kara run today as a barely t4 ret paladin and did about 1400 DPS over the entire run.

I'd say this shit is BANANAS

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterLuuk

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