Why is the World of Warcraft installation download so slow?

Question

I was wondering if anyone else out there is having problems with the WoW installer, I recently signed up for an account so I could take advantage of this play the first 20 levels for free promotion.

I've registered fine but I now have the downloader client up and it just doesn't seem to want to download the files (and when it does we are talking speeds between 5-15kb/s). I've got a decent 10MB connection from Virgin media and all other net related activity flies by so i very much doubt its that; I've also DMZ'd myself on my router to help with any connection problems that might be occurring. Finally i've also tried adding the TCP and UDP exceptions to my firewall to allow the downloader through Windows firewall.

Does anyone have any ideas as i'm completely stumped?

Answer 1

Have you tried disabling peer to peer download? By default, the blizzard downloader use p2p to accelerate the download, but your ISP may be throttling p2p transfer. To disable it, in the blizzard downloader, go to the View --> Preference menu and uncheck the box "Enable peer to peer".

source: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=21065

Answer 2

The Blizzard downloader is a BitTorrent client; unfortunately, Virgin Media appear to block BitTorrent traffic. If switching Peer-to-Peer Download off doesn't work, you can try downloading from an external mirror; Blizzard have a list of sites likely to host the game files here. You'll probably also need to do this every time a new patch is released.

Answer 3

I've have sometimes had this problem before where the download just stops or is just crawling. My best solution is to restart the client. Otherwise try looking at Blizzards troubleshooting forums http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/874936/

Answer 4

What does the download report as a warning/error? If there is something it would report it to you.

Try to look for an alternative way to get the download; if not, get a friend to get you the cached files.

Answer 5

Unchecking the 'Automatically detect settings' works for me. When disabled the download increases to 100% of my bandwidth.

Answer 6

This will probably not work for everyone but it worked for me so it might help you if your wow launcher isn't downloading the patch or if it's extremely slow to download it (like 1k every 5 mins)

Also note that this is with Windows 7 Premium

• Open Internet Explorer
• click Tools
• Internet options
• click the Connections tab
• Click Lan settings
• Uncheck the ''Automatically detect settings''
• click ok
• click ok again then close Internet Explorer and try to open the wow launcher again

after that my download was going at 1.6 - 1.8 Mb/sec :)

Also remember to go check the ''Automatically detect settings'' box again after your done, apparently it might cause problem later with your internet if you leave it unchecked (that 's what someone told me)

Hope it help ;)