Hello friends,
TLDR; scroll down for the only fix that worked for me, not perfect but much much better. On a 1gb connection I went from (0-100kilobyte/s to 13+megabyte/s . This will be rather long since there’s a few steps to try and some related info.
There’s been a lot of issues with players having difficulty downloading at reasonable speeds. These issues almost never existed in years past but in recent years there’s plenty of people having trouble; I’ve personally had issues on half a dozen pc’s, several different providers, different houses, all over the last ~3-4 years. If you look through tech support both here, and on wow forums, about 5-10% of these complaints and cries for help get responded to and it’s almost entirely from community members and never blizzard who have any meaningful replies.
In prior builds of the launcher there were several workarounds, such as manually changing the pathing to a different download server which worked wonders. The current launcher is restrictive, and it’s hard to tell what the issues are as a result.
Please do keep in mind, individual causes will vary and sometimes it very much has nothing to do with battlenet, can be pc/isp/wiring issues. If however you’re specifically only ever having problems with the blizzard launcher, have tried basic networking troubleshoots, and being told it’s not blizzards fault; here’s what you should try in descending order of potential for system issues and technicality:
- Change bandwidth limit - Used to be set to 0 for max but this doesn’t work. Set it to a stupid number like 10000000. click the download speed itself and it will take you to the settings.
- Change region - Changing region, starting the download, and changing back can help soft reset the pathing, occasionaly useful. I would recommend logging out, pressing the cog and changing region, log in, close battlenet, open task manager to stop update agent process, launch again, try downloading, if it’s fine leave it and change back later. If not, log out, change back, log in, close battlenet, open task manager to stop update agent process, launch again.
- WMI resets - This one overall has no major risks to it, but can cause corruptions/conflicts/require manual repairs of programs. This primarily effects things like overclocking software/antivirus/peripheral trackers. Go google what WMI is if you’re concerned/curious. Bliz don’t recognise this as their issue, however the programs register their own WMI info so yes blizzard it’s 100% your fault, fix your $$$$. There’s 2 steps to try, only do step 2 if step 1 doesn’t work.
- WMI self repair - 0 risk, very easy. With bnet closed Press windows key, type cmd, right click open as admin, type winmgmt /verifyrepository if it shows inconsistent, and honestly even if it doesn’t type winmgmt /salvagerepository
- WMI reset some specific risks, read above. Also in cmd prompt as an admin with bnet closed, type winmgmt /resetrepository - This will completely reset the WMI, clearing battlenet WMI settings. You will likely also need to: press windows key + R, type C:/programdata/ - select battlenet, delete, launching battlenet will rebuild the directory and WMI data. If this worked, hooray. Now restart your computer because the the WMI will rebuild some of itself from a reboot, and check any of your programs like MSI afterburner for issues (just uninstall and reinstall if needed).
If any of these fixed your issue, please reply with what worked for you so future friendos know to try for themselves. Keep in mind that as patches roll out, there’s always the possibility problems re-appear, and you may need to troubleshoot again.
EDIT: blizzardos/communitydoos, please don’t delete this if people find it helpful, a sticky would be even better since it’s a multiple year problem. If you won’t fix it, and won’t offer support, then at least help community members help each other.