Patch 3.3: Background Downloading Continues
Amatera
I know the rest of you are as sad as I was to learn that today would not end up being patch day, but the march towards 3.3 continues on regardless. Logging onto World of Warcraft and then exiting again will activate the Background Downloader, which is now gathering data from the second chunk of the patch.
This piece (wow-partial-2.mpq) clocks in at a whopping 656 MB. That's even larger than the first (wow-partial-1.mpq), which was a "mere" 459 MB. If you do the math, that totals to just a scoche over 1.1 GB, making it one of the heftiest non-expansion patches we've seen so far! Not surprising with an expansive raid dungeon and three five man instances coming all at once.
But enough of the numbers. What could this mean for the release of Patch 3.3? Considering the size, I'd hope that this is the last pre-load we get and that any more data coming down the pike is doles out on release day (there really shouldn't be a whole lot left). However, this whole deal has thrown out a lot of what I thought I knew about patch cycles, leaving me with little desire to speculate any further on a specific date. Personally, I'd still love to see it this month, but at this point, any guess I could possible have comes out of hope rather than education, so I'll just stick with Blizzard's own age-old mantra: "soon."
We'll keep you up to date if anything else happens or new details come to light. In the meantime, feel free to share with us how your download experience is coming along. For me, it sped along until around 450, and now it's chugging very slowly towards the finish.
Edit: Oops! As some readers have pointed out, the total for both chunks of the patch is 656 MB, not for the second piece alone. No need to form a lynch mob, I'll go out back and beat myself!
This piece (wow-partial-2.mpq) clocks in at a whopping 656 MB. That's even larger than the first (wow-partial-1.mpq), which was a "mere" 459 MB. If you do the math, that totals to just a scoche over 1.1 GB, making it one of the heftiest non-expansion patches we've seen so far! Not surprising with an expansive raid dungeon and three five man instances coming all at once.
But enough of the numbers. What could this mean for the release of Patch 3.3? Considering the size, I'd hope that this is the last pre-load we get and that any more data coming down the pike is doles out on release day (there really shouldn't be a whole lot left). However, this whole deal has thrown out a lot of what I thought I knew about patch cycles, leaving me with little desire to speculate any further on a specific date. Personally, I'd still love to see it this month, but at this point, any guess I could possible have comes out of hope rather than education, so I'll just stick with Blizzard's own age-old mantra: "soon."
We'll keep you up to date if anything else happens or new details come to light. In the meantime, feel free to share with us how your download experience is coming along. For me, it sped along until around 450, and now it's chugging very slowly towards the finish.
Edit: Oops! As some readers have pointed out, the total for both chunks of the patch is 656 MB, not for the second piece alone. No need to form a lynch mob, I'll go out back and beat myself!
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