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I live in a pretty rural area so the only way we can get internet besides dial up is with a Verizon Hotspot. The only problem is that it has a data plan on it (we only have 30 gigs) and they do not offer unlimited usage.

So I went to Walmart last night and picked up the World Of Warcraft Battle Chest 5 because it came with the install discs. When I got home and I popped in the first CD all it did was open Battle.net and started downloading the whole 25 gigabyte game.

What is the point of having two install discs if all it does is direct me to have it download it. I understand that the game is patched a lot but there is no way that it has had 25 gigs of updates since Mists of Pandaria.

Is there a way to install through the disks that I am missing or do I have to download the game?

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  • I've noticed people on Amazon complaining that the discs didn't actually install anything and instead force you to download the entire game. Makes me wonder if there's some trick to it.
    – Powerlord
    Jan 23, 2015 at 19:48
  • I've stopped WoW a long time ago, but those updates tend to be quite large, usually almost 1 GB per update and more if there's a new expansion. If I'm not mistaken, Warlords of Draenor should be the next expansion after Pandaria; that could explain why the update is so large.
    – Nolonar
    Jan 23, 2015 at 19:48
  • @Nolonar Right, but unless you buy Warlords of Draenor, you won't have that content. Mists of Pandaria is the only one it should have to install as its not included in the latest BattleChest (everything up to Cataclysm is).
    – Powerlord
    Jan 23, 2015 at 19:54
  • @Powerlord Even if he "doesn't have that content", the game will still download the full content up to the latest patch. He just simply won't be able to do anything that requires the expansion, but all of the assets will still be there.
    – user66184
    Jan 23, 2015 at 20:51
  • @Thebluefish That's not true. None of the geography for Draenor will be included in the download unless your account has access to Draenor. At least that's how expansions used to work.
    – Powerlord
    Jan 23, 2015 at 22:16

3 Answers 3

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Yes you do have to download it all. Even if you don't buy the latest expansion it will make you download everything, even if it won't let you see it in game. I know that they upgraded the visuals in WOD so it may be worse than usual now. The expansions in order are:

  • Vanilla
  • Burning Crusade
  • Wrath of the Lich King
  • Cataclysm
  • Mists of Pandaria
  • Warlords of Draenor

At 5 GB per DVD 25 GB would be at least 5 discs, are there that many in your war chest?

You could always do what I did and take your computer to a faster, unlimited connection.

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  • Actually, a dual layer DVD can hold ~8.5 GB of data, so 25 GB would require 3 DL-DVDs, not 5.
    – Nolonar
    Jan 23, 2015 at 21:02
  • My chest only came with two CD's. The cover art is an Elf girl holding a translucent dragon. When I looked on amazon to do some research it said that it included all of the expansions except WoD. When I opened the box it only had two cd's.
    – PopeOfNope
    Jan 23, 2015 at 21:18
  • @PopeOfNope Do you know someone in a bigger city with a good internet connection? He could download it and burn it on multiple dvds or put it on a USB Stick (those are pretty cheap right now) sans Battle.Net and mail it to you. Then you just copy it somewhere on your PC and tell the BNet Client where it is. WoW does not need to be installed as in run an installer, it is pretty portable. That person does NOT need your account info.
    – user28015
    Jan 23, 2015 at 22:23
  • @PopeOfNope The Warlords of Draenor DVD contains all content up to and including the release patch of Warlords of Draenor. If you installed from that disc, then you wouldn't need as many updates. You could purchase it yourself, or borrow a disc from a friend. Either one should get you a much smaller download for the updates.
    – user66184
    Jan 23, 2015 at 23:31
  • Alright I am going to the library in town to download it. My friends say its gets around 3MB/second so I'll be there for a few hours. Thanks for the answers.
    – PopeOfNope
    Jan 24, 2015 at 3:41
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There are several issues with the Battle Chest CDs.

  • The CDs only included content from vanilla WoW and (in later boxes) Burning Crusade, the first expansion.
  • At the start of Cataclysm the game launcher was replaced with a completely new version.
  • During Mists the game launcher was replaced again with the Battle.net Desktop App.
  • At the start of Warlords, the on-disk format that the game data is stored in was changed.

All of this means that, even though you may have some of the necessary data on the CDs, almost none of it is usable with the game as it exists today. All the old CDs can do now is to download the current installer and then install the full game from the network. (And of course the box also provides a key which activates your account and gives you 30 days of game time.)

Your best bet is to download the game from another location with better Internet access. You can transfer the game data onto an external hard drive or USB stick and take it home.

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  • That is the first battle chest. They have released more over time. We have an old one at work with workload included.
    – user106385
    Jun 28, 2015 at 0:58
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I haven't tried it since WoD, but the game files used to be completely portable.

Given that is still the case, you could:

  • Start the download. Up until the point where the downloader creates the WoW folder and starts downloading.
  • Stop the download, but not remove the folder from your file system.
  • Go to a friend, copy his WoW folder onto a USB stick
  • Copy that in your WoW folder on your pc.
  • Start up Battle.net again. It might have to do some checks etc, but it should prevent any downloading (other than the odd bugfix).

That's how we used to do it every time a friend would start playing (again).

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