Posted by Amatera on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 - 17 Comments
Tags: 3.3, background, downloader, icc, icecrown citadel, Patch, ptr, release
Oh Blizzard, you’re so sneaky! With a notice surreptitiously tucked away at the bottom of the launcher, and a download utility that chugs away at forthcoming patches minimized on your taskbar, you wouldn’t even realize you were downloading anything at all unless you were looking for it! But if you’ve used your World of Warcraft client today, chances are you’ve already got pieces of 3.3 on your hard drive.
Exciting, isn’t it?!
The pre-patching process allows Blizzard to push information such as texture and environment data (in other words, stuff that wouldn’t currently affect gameplay) well ahead of patch day, so that when that moment comes, the process runs just a little bit smoother. As much as it might lighten the load on the data servers, though, it rarely does anything for the mountain of people trying to access the latest content, leading to lag on live servers, which leads to frustration and disappointment anyway, which leads to the Dark Side.
Of course, the first thing your mind probably jumps to when you hear news like this is “the patch is coming next week,” right? Well, the answer to that is… possibly. Now that we know Blizzard is gating content in Icecrown Citadel, that gives them plenty of time to continue testing encounters featured later in the dungeon in the background while hungry players sink their teeth into the first bites of the instance on live servers. From all I’ve experienced, the first set of bosses is more or less ready to go and itemization is in place.
Nonetheless, it may still be unwise to release 3.3 the week of Thanksgiving, since most players will probably be vacationing, out of town, or otherwise spending time with their families. But either way, with data being pre-loaded, I don’t expect the patch to be more than two weeks out.
Only time will tell, so keep your eyes on the downloader and on Project Lore for more information on 3.3’s release!
Related Posts: Patch 3.3 Not Live for “1 Month +”, Patch 3.3: Background Downloading Continues, Patch 3.0.2 Going To Be Big - Downloading Begins Soon, 11/09 Hotfix Breaks WoW, Project Lore WotLK Beta Week 1 Wrap Up,
By Ryan on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
3.3!!!!!!
By denalo on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
well thats not a firster but it’s similar 0.o? lol sigh i want to play wow so bad now..damn hackers i swear lol.oh well i look forward to watching other people do the instances*tankspot* for theserious how to raid info and PL for the fun times
By Alayea on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
As a footnote to Amatera’s blog, if you’re having problems with the downloader not working, don’t feel bad. You have a lot of people in the same boat as you (myself included).
By Heartbourne on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
THREE THREE!
By Tharon on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
If it is anywhere near as large as, I believe but could be wrong, 2.3, I predict 15 Dec 09 for 3.3 to go live. One, maybe two, more pre-patch DL’s and then the release. Thanks for the post. Had I not opened up PL’s site first, I woulda logged in and been none the wiser. So, great excuse for a WoW break, as it DL’s over night.
By Tharon on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
@Alayea
At what point are y’all havin issues?
By WarlockWookie on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
My download speed is TERRIBLE! it’s going at about 30 kb/s. What speed do you others usually dl at?
By aadjed on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 4:15 am
Why should it not be released next week? I thought Thanksgiving is only celebrated in North America.
By aadjed on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 4:17 am
But I am looking forward to the new patch. All content, exccept totc hardmode, is on farm in the guild.
By Amatera on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 4:26 am
@aadjed
Well, yes. But a significant portion of the playerbase is in North America. Not to mention Blizzard employees themselves, who I’m sure would rather be celebrating the holiday than dealing with the inevitable complaints and server problems.
Then again, who knows? Maybe they think they can handle it.
By ViperhawkZ on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 5:46 am
Only in the U.S., you mean. Canadian Thanksgiving was back in October.
By Rogue4Life on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 7:44 am
for those that have trouble down loading patch or that get a lot of lag on patch day. you might consider going into the options and checking the box that says “don’t throttle in background” er, something like that. While it warns that is my slow the system, the nice thing is that it helps download patch stuff. Also, if there is anything you can turn off that is running in the background that always helps. Making sure your internet usage is at a minimum during the download also helps.
as for when to expect the patch, I would venture to say the week after thanksgiving we may see the release, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t till Dec. 8. Only thing that means is with the schedule they have proposed is that the LK won’t be seen till January, if then.
I know each time a patch comes around we say, oh this patch is gunna be huge. Well, with what is coming in 3.3 as far as LFG, UI, 3 new 5 mans & “end game” raid content, I don’t have too big a problem with the “gating” of the raid content. It gives time for those that need to catch up in gear and really lets a group get the boss fight down so when the new section opens up you can get to the new guy with the majority (if not all) of your attempts available.
Really looking forward to patch 3.3. There is just going to be a lot to do and not having to worry about needing to raid every night will be nice.
By Pegraath on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 8:55 am
The poor download speed is deliberate during the prepatch downloading.
This is so you don’t notice it and just switch it off.
My download rate is currently 35k/sec (on a 2Meg line). Bear in mind that this is Pre-patch so you don’t need it for another week (at the very least) there is no point in whining about poor download speed.
With other big patches they’ve come in packages of about 500meg each, and I’d guess we have 2 big downloads. Finally, on patchday itself, the game servers usually remain off until about lunchtime and the patch download speed restrictions are removed (and a 50meg or so chunk of patch remains), so you’re going as fast as your connection speed can handle.
When will it be finished? I reckon a week after the Thanksgiving in game event. Screwing up with a patch during a holiday is pretty poor and means they need to extend the holiday event (see Brewfest), so I doubt they’d do it again.
Bottom line: Don’t moan about poor connection speed - it’s deliberate!
By Vexklythor on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 9:48 am
My background downloader wasn’t starting this morning so I started looking for mirrors when I made it to work this morning. On the official forums I found a thread (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21034438977&sid=1) with a question about downloading the patch. The second reply is from Datth, a Blue:
Hi Alisperis,
We only provide mirror links for full client patches. Background downloads do not count. You have around 1+ month to download this file so we’re not really worried about your speed.
The “1+ to download” part sucks. I really thought we’d get this before Christmas.
By Daemonbane on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 11:23 am
CMON 3.3 WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
By Alayea on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
@Tharon
Here’s a thread link on the official forums that describes the problem: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21254575937&sid=1
I am currently downloading the pre-patch data though, thanks to Segnbora’s post on the matter (same thread). Apparently the issue is the result of a bugged BackgroundDownloader.exe . I encourage people having a problem with getting the data to look into the thread and see if it is what’s affecting them.
By Amatera on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
@Vex
That’s a rather interesting piece of information there. I wouldn’t know why, for the life of me, they’d need a whole month, let alone more, to release the patch unless they’re deliberately pushing it after *all* the holidays have passed.
Which would be a terrible mistake on their part if you ask me. An awful lot of people are bored/tired of ToC right now.
And gating would allow them time to retune bosses later in the dungeon if they aren’t yet happy with them.