I recently discovered a fix which allowed me to finally download and install WoW Classic on my Macbook Pro. I had been battling the initializing bug for a week and a half and tried every fix I could find. I tried all the permissions and folder access settings to no avail along with a litany of other things. The one thing that worked was sending myself a copy of the indices from my Windows desktop.
I simply zipped up the indices folder and downloaded it to my MacBook. Then went into the Battlenet app and let it get stuck and then paused it around 90MB of initializing to populate the indices folder structure. I closed the app and then I copied the new indices into the proper folder deleting what was currently in there. Then I just reopened Battlenet and hit resume and voila, it started downloading the game no problem and then I was able to launch and had no more issues.
This seems like a software bug where it’s looping the indices download and not properly populating the folder, I saw a vague reference to this somewhere which gave me the idea.
Truly an incredible amount of frustration over less than 500MB of files but alas.
Hope this helps someone.
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I think it really comes down to a permission issue in creating them in first place, so creating them yourself seems to help.
It is worth noting that using indices from any other computer renders all existing downloaded data worthless. Indices are UNIQUE per computer and are a map of where all the files are placed in the generated archives. So if for example you have a fully downloaded wow and are only stuck on just updating it, replacing indices from another install renders ALL data you have worthless, it’ll replace all of it with data that matches the indices you have placed. so a stuck 200MB patch might be a 120Gig redownload. Of course to many users that’s still better than being stuck, but something to be aware of on slower internet or data caps
Yeah wasted 4 hours on this with a fresh sonoma install/machine tonight. Having to trek over to an older windows machine and zip up the indices did the trick. World class devs.
My friend has a MacBook and we wanted to play classic together. He was having this issue and we tried everything on the internet for hours and nothing worked. Finally I came across this post and did everything you said (emailed my friend my indices folder from my PC desktop) and it worked. You saved us from giving up and not being able to play the game together. Thank you so much. o7
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Glad to hear it. Wish they would fix it though or sticky this in BOLD.
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