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I am currently very confused. I have bought the battle chest for WoW (1st game, Burning Crusade and WOTLK) and then of course Cataclysm. What I would like to find out it: Do I need to install each game from the CD's from the beginning? IE install first WoW, when its finished install BC, then WOTLK etc, or does WOTLK or Cataclysm come with all the game before on it and I only need to install WOTLK or Cataclysm and I will have everything I need anyway?

Downloading the game is not an option as we have incredibly slow internet in our country and also a capped amount of data in a month. I don't want to install each CD one by one if there is a way to just put one of the later ones in that have everything I will need on it anyway?

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2 Answers 2

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You can just install directly from the Cataclysm DVD. Ignore all previous discs. Once Cataclysm is installed, you'll need to patch up to the current 4.2 patch, which may require a few subsequent downloads - Blizzard only releases combo updaters periodically, and often skips versions before doing so. Sadly, this will require quite a bit of time and/or bandwidth. Major content patches can be several gigabytes in size.

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  • I actually bought ALL the expansions (which I couldn't have cared less about) in the mindset that I would be able to avoid the 12GB or whatever of patches that my friend needed to download but couldn't because he was using a broadband USB modem thing with a 2GB limit. Biggest. Waste. Of cash. Ever.. Seems like all 4 discs have almost the same data on them..
    – Marty
    Commented Oct 30, 2011 at 22:04
  • You still need to buy all the expansions in order to, y'know, actually play past level 60. (Or, 70 now I suppose, since BC has been rolled into the base game.)
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Commented Oct 30, 2011 at 22:16
  • Yeah but I don't play the game enough for any of that.. I got over it at level 58 or something haha.
    – Marty
    Commented Oct 30, 2011 at 22:18
  • Be helpful if there was an clear instructional install guide. Can I download the latest patch and patch over the top of WOTLK disks? I don't have cataclysm but I want to use the trial of 14 days. So 3.0.2 - > 4.2.2? Or are there incremental patching that must be done?
    – Jared
    Commented Oct 31, 2011 at 0:33
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    Just in case anyone is wondering exact file sizes (like I was) I installed from WOTLK discs and after a 73mb patch to update the update/launcher tool blizzard wanted to download 9GB! I tried just installing from the launcher it self and in that case it was 10GB. I will however add I was able to play after 626MB was downloaded from the launcher, altho I had more stuff to download while waiting on the Loading screens :) HTH. Cheers
    – Jared
    Commented Nov 3, 2011 at 23:04
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Running the install from the official site or the cata disk will use the online installer, it will download needed files to play first, then go on to some not as important files, what this dose is that you can start playing before the full game is actully on your computer, some times you will have a bit longer load times if its missing some information for the area your in, but better to be playing than installing i would say :)

Edit some random link i found explaining the installer

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