« Random Heroes: Doctor Hamilton | Main | Project Lore's Pics From BlizzCon »

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)

My server has had almost no problems that i have seen. i got the download fast and easy got on and specced and went out and got my new corehound which i love then went and dueled people with him. hunters seem very over powered at the moment because i was killing people with a ton better gear then me in a matter of seconds.

October 15, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterDimak

since the borkage still continues for most we at the KoR demand a free pet of some kind.

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterPokesomi

I had no problems installing it on Vista 64. However i don't have my pet tab!

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterRaposo

My Hubbies computer has Vista on it he had a hard time also gettting the patch to the right folder. My computer does not have Vista so it was no sweat for me. There is a third computer that also has Vista on it the only issue I had with that computer since the patch was finished is I can not talk with any vendors or see the items. Oh well guess no new PVP items.

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterRedaurora

thank god i didnt experience your obvius troubles. my server (tarren mill europe) goes like clockwork (except the server restarts every 30 minutes)... but i gotta say i luv the new warrior-arms attack bladestorm... its just incredible.. im 69 and downed a epic wearing rogue without troubles!

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterDD

Wotlk ftw

/love Inscription =)

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterMariodude

Downloaded the patch yesterday, 2nd patch installed on my Mac no problem. Logged on, got far too excited about all the new stuff! Which I am still grinning about.

Then I got logged off a couple of times. Then I couldnt log on at all :-(

Still not able to log onto my server (Nagrand EU). Just getting a "choose a realm" screen

Not happy....any ideas guys? Ive removed all the add ons, etc

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterSmoothSmiler

you know, its not worth it to complain about down time, you right itzkoopa, better now then better on release date. i mean things wont ever or always go right, look how many people play, it wont go right for everyone. for me it went just fine, but i waited 24hrs to play bc i knew something like the echoes of doom patch would come with errors. its given me time to play other games (deadspace...buy it its awesome...). but now my game runs smoother and faster at a full power. feels good.

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered Commenterfriksydingo

My server went a bit weird really on Kilrogg realm. Installing the patch was fine and dandy but took a hell of a long time, about 4 hours in total YAWN. When i eventually got on it was great untill i went to Stormwind, And all it wanted to do was say "World server is down". Got on again HS's to Shatt and all was fine so i forgot about it and went to try out the new talents and Duel weilding 2 handers SOOOOO GOOD! But then i wanted to try out a glyph so went to SW again, then kaboom 'World server down". asked a few ppl in guild and they said that all apart from outlands was down. Got on today though which was fine but not sure i'm going to go back to SW for about a week at most! Great addition to the game though, put a bit more spark into the game i think, and the acheivement points are fun to go and earn :)

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterTrias

My guilds run of kara was going awesome until we tried to go round the back for the curator and the we realised we could get out. So we decided to go the cash was to get some pocket money :)... we did it and moved to Shade of Aran... We wiped cause before we had a hunter run out of ammo and he could use his hearth stone or my portals to get outta kara... then he disconnected... but anyway back to the wipe. When everyone died and i died all i saw was when people were releasing was 'name' has disconnected' and then i realsed and i disconnected and could get back on til this morning... lucky enough i have a 70 paladin on another server and realised how awesome and OP they are now XD. I hope both my mage and paladin dont get nerfed =[

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterKurtis

iMacs FTW!

No patch install issues. Just lots of lag and addons that aren't updated.

Love ProjectLore btw. My husband and I are totally addicted.

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterWoWwife

I had a VERY good time downloading the patch. The minute i got home from work, i started the patch download. 5 hours later, it finally completes... only to let me know that I don't have enough space on my hard drive for the @#$@# patch! So now i have to take my computer into the shop to get the hard drive upgrade! good times! Oh the money we spend on WoW. It's not just $15 a month!

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterHenry Petty

I waited until the evening of the 2d day after the patch was released to download the final patch stubs and get up and running. The WoW Tech Support forum was full of horror stories, so I decided to wait.

My XP patch went flawlessly, although it took a bit longer than I expected with the download appearing to slow dramatically at 98% (but still continuing),and the actual install taking some time...but all was OK.

Prior to patching, I had updated every add-on that I could find that was supposed to work with 3.0.2. I launched WoW and entered Ironforge on the Duskwood server, ready to redistribute talents, but then immediately panicked when I could find no Pet Tab in my character window, and both my mounts wouldn't work. It took about 5 minutes for me to receive a yellow text notification in General Chat saying something to the effect that I had learned how to ride a Nightsabre. Shortly after that, the Pet Tab appeared, but would do nothing other than offer a 3D view of the mount. Several minutes after than, my flying mount "learned" text appeared in General Chat. After about 10 minutes total, my mount icons worked on the action bars, and all was OK...but I had some very anxious moments.

I redistributed talents, replaced some missing icons in action bars, then went to visit the local poison vendor (playing my Rogue), confirmed that reagents were no longer needed, but also discovered that the higher level poisons were not offered by that vendor. Have researched, and it appears that I can purchase them in Shat on the Scryer's Tier (will confirm this evening).

Checked out the AH, purchased a couple major glyphs, located the Lexicon of Power, and enhanced my Backstab and Sinister Strike capabilities. Sweet! I then sold all my poison reagents and anything that had to do with Vanish, freeing up all kinds of bank and bag slots. Very nice.

I did have to adjust shadow detail to about 25% to keep my fps close to what it was prior to the patch, but other than than, everything seems to be working well atm.

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterPhoenix599

I had no major issues with the patch. Got home from work and downloaded the new patch. Which only took me 5 min =).

Then installed on my Vista machine with no problems, started the game only to realize that all my addons dont work anymore ='(

My server was up and running at 6 pm PST, only had to reboot once, but I was able to get all my glyphs for both my hunter and my warrior and re-do all my talents for both toons before the reboot of the server, which only lasted about an hour then I was back to getting as many achivements as I could for the night.

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterFernando

i am now installing BC disks and i am going to install patch next i hope it works because i have Vista and i am on Executus which i guess is workiing cuz projectlore is on and making videos please reply

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterDillon

Dunemaul - US, Horde, not a single problem to report, but i did also wait until after work to sign on. i also ran out of room on the HD had to switch to my bigger drive and when i did i was half out of breathe and there was a dead character where i was.... must have run out of breathe? anyone else see that? i really like the spellbook adds and the fact that pets don't take up bag room. the graphics in UC ran smoother than before 3.0.2 started the "/love the various animals", and i must say the trackin part doesn't track very well. and of all things my wife misses the BC login screen, but i like the WotLK one better.

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterSpikolie

I play on 2 computers, my desktop(self Built) and my laptop(best buy Special), bith running XP, my laptop patched up fine no issues, my desktop on the other hand had issues since i said the word patch, first attempt patch did not work tried the fix utility twice sstill did not work, it reverted me back to 2.0.0 and then tried to patch back up and worked till the new patch and this cycle happened 4 times before i said screw it and did a fresh install from the begining. well needless to say the above scenerio happened 2 more times, of course cant get blizzard on the phone, so third fresh install and everything worked like it was supposed to. so to make a long story short after about 14hours of down loading and installing im back up on my desktop!!!!!!

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterLoc Dog

IMPORTANT PETITION FOR COMPUTER PROBLEM

ever sense i downloaded the new patch, my computer has gotten messed up. after reinstalling addons and playing nonstop, yesterday my computer began freezing for about 2 seconds, then the harddrive makes a beeping noise. yes, it is coming from the harddrive. it does this in all programs, even when booting windows. now i found that after playing wow all day, i log on and hit enter world. it goes unresponsive, and does not load AT ALL. anyone else have this problem? i wonder if it has to do with WoW or not... just really bummed i cant for now :(

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterDavid

David, make sure you have good air flow in your case about the only thing I can think of that would cause such a problem is the fact the default settings on the new patch is more cpu intensive than before meaning your cpu and video card will work harder and produce more heat.

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterPauldy

Well, things are pretty stable on Malfurion now. We only lost Outland and Eastern Kingdoms once today, and they weren't down for very long. The only real problem now is that after those two places crashed, there's a lot of players saying that their toons are inaccessible because an error pops up on some of the characters claiming that "the name is already in use".

Well, can't say I'm bored... :|

October 16, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterAlayea

I am having trouble at the moment but have heard no-one else mention it..... Everytime i re-log my character i lose all of my macro's all the settings for my add-ons, also no-matter what i turned off in the add-on selection menu it would just give me a random selection of add-ons (most of which didnt work) i have managed to get round this part by deleting nearly all of my add-ons from wow folder, but if anyone knows why i cannot save macro's or settings on my ZHunter Mod please feel free to share :)

October 18, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterSeveer

the new content of this patch has been great, but there are some serious lag issues. currently i was just trying to complete some of the hallows end quests, and i got disconnected and it wont get past the loading screen.

October 18, 2008 | Unregistered Commenterbalzakk

i dont think anyone else mentioned, but patches under XP are stored in 'C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Updates'
but under Vista: 'C:\Users\Public\Documents\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft\Updates'... caught me out when copying the patch between my machines. thankfully i downloaded it on Vista (while at work woot, more bandwidth left for me at home :P ) or else i doubt i wouldv found where to put it in Vista otherwise.

October 19, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterSaemundr

I didn't have too many issues, except my toon has been somewhat anorexic of late and refuses to eat or drink more than about two seconds at a time.

October 21, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterMattie McGee

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.

My response is on my own website »
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>