The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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4:29pm on Thursday, 13th November, 2008:
Outburst
I got Wrath of the Lich King today, the latest expansion for World of Warcraft. I ordered it from Amazon.co.uk, and it arrived in the post. I installed it, and it went like a dream, no hitches.
Then, I tried to run it.
Hmm.
My WoW account is on US servers, because the initial copy of the software I was given was for US servers. When the previous expansion came out, The Burning Crusade, I bought it in the UK but had to register it with the US servers so I could use it. This worked fine. This time round, though, it didn't work fine. When I tried to register it on the US account update site, it refused to recognise the authentication key; when I tried to register it on the EU account update site, it refused to recognise the account.
When I tried to run it anyway, it began downloading the enormous 3.0.2 patch. I already had this patch, but for US servers. I cancelled it, changed the wow.ini file so it looked on the US servers for login and patches and then ran it. This didn't do the patch, but connected me directly to the login server. It then complained that my client was the wrong one, and wouldn't continue. I changed the wow.ini file back to what it was and tried to run the game again. This time, the updater began downloading stuff then bombed out on it. When I tried again, the updater itself produced an immediate crash. I tried to uninstall the expansion, but the uninstaller couldn't find the installation file list.
I'm therefore currently using the Blizzard repair facility, which has been downloading (presumably) the 3.0.2 patch for several hours now (it's got 205Mb so far). When it finally gets it all, the program will hopefully be in a fit state for me to uninstall it so my younger daughter can still play. I'll have to wait until I get to the USA at the end of the month to buy a US-compatible version of the expansion.
I wouldn't care, but I tried to order the expansion from Amazon.com rather than Amazon.co.uk so as to try avoid such US/EU issues, but they wouldn't ship it out of the country.
Wonderful.
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Copyright © 2008 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).