Posting here with hope to get more traction and hopefully a resolution to this issue.
Since this past Tuesday when the patch went live my game has been basically broken. The issue seems to be with the Battle.net launcher. The download will not begin and stays stuck in initializing, also seems to be stuck in a loop and the button lights up for a second saying “Update” then goes back to initializing.
I have tried every single option that I have found from searching these forums, YouTube, google, Blizzard’s responses in tickets I’ve opened all with zero success.
I did manage to get the game to launch and be playable at some point but by launching via the games exe and not the launcher, it then downloaded to 7% and stayed stuck there all week. Today 10/29 with the reset I am back to square one with this issue and cannot play.
Here is a list of everything that I have tried in no particular order, none of which worked.
Restart the computer
Task manager close Battle.net and restart it
Released and renewed IP via CMD and flushed DNS
Tried wireless vs hardwire (normally hardwired)
Tried directly off the modem and not the router
Deleted all Battle.net and Blizzard Entertainment data/cache files from computer and restarting. Then opening launcher.
Deleting Battle.net all together, redownloading and installing.
Uninstalled Battle.net and Wow and re-installed.
Rolled system back to previous restore point before the patch.
Ran system in safe mode with networking
Disabled/Deleted all addons
Tried installing everything onto a different drive
Disabled anti-virus
Scanned for viruses and malware
Updated graphics driver, uninstalled Wow and Battle.net and restarted with fresh new download of Battle.net.
To be honest I might have done more and can’t even recall out of the pure frustration. It should be noted that this is only affecting World of Warcraft and other games such as Call of Duty work fine from the Battle.net launcher and I was able to download a 50 gig patch to Call of Duty without any issues whatsoever but Wow will not update. I am at a loss for what to do to fix this. I have considered even updating to Windows 11 just to see if it will work. Prior to 10/22 I have had zero issues with the game for years. I have not made any hardware or software changes to the computer prior to these issues.
Very open to any suggestions on resolving this issue.
I would think reinstalling the launcher and WoW fresh would solve any software related problems that were caused by either the app or some corrupt files for WoW so anything people could suggest on that end doesn’t seem like it should work if you really did clean/fresh install of both of those things.
You didn’t mention scan and repair though so you could try that for the hell of it. IE: click the cogwheel on the WoW page of the launcher and select scan and repair. I wouldn’t think it would do anything after a fresh install though.
You could try opening a command prompt with administrative privledges and typing sfc /scannow to check for corrupt OS files.
I have done both scan and repair and ran command prompt for the /scannow. Neither were of any success. The fresh install has not worked either. It did start to download, gets to 400ish mb into the download and stops.
Also I have noticed that it goes from “initializing… please wait” to “waiting on another update” in a loop, then eventually just pauses. If you click un-pause, it says Whoops and error has occurred and you have to relaunch the bnet launcher.
Just currently tried adding proton vpn and running it to see if it would make any difference, it has not.
I’d suggest you transfer this post to the Technical Support forum. There are Blizzard peoples there who frequently assist with this sort of stuff. Here you will only get us player types.
I have it posted there as well but after several days I received few replies, and nothing has helped. This is kind of my last-ditch effort. I’ve played this game since vanilla with zero real issues. This recent patch obliterated my game for some reason.
Half tempted to finally bite the bullet and upgrade to windows 11 just to see if it fixes this, but I am doubtful that it will.
Blizzard just gives canned responses that do not fix the issue. So, unless I luck out and run into someone on this forum that can help me fix it, I guess it’s just time to unsub and move on.
Nothing else really comes to mind unfortunately. I would think maybe hardware issues but you mentioned the CoD update working so I’d think that would have also had issues if the WoW problem was caused by a failing hard drive or something like that.
One other thing if you didn’t try would be to fully exit the launcher then re-open doing run as administrator and then trying to download or scan and repair with the launcher running as administrator.
Don’t think it’ll do anything but make you feel more annoyed cause now you’re stuck with windows 11.
I never upgraded to 11 either and everything works fine with bnet and wow (minus the standard issues I always have caused by my computer being a potato by today’s standards). I think it must be something else. Do you use auto updates for wow?
When I had this happen a few years ago I had to update my drivers, not just graphic but also audio.
You stated you did graphics, make sure all drivers are updated…
Usually restarting computer works, and uninstalling, downloading and installing the launcher works.
Obviously that didn’t work for you. ugh
Hummm…
If you are using a VPN try turning that off.
This is weird. The things you have already done should have fixed it!
Hopefully Tech support will be able to help you. I have no more ideas. I have had this happen, but the driver update and then once even longer ago… Uninstalling, downloading and reinstalling the launcher fixed it.
Although the redownload of the game stopped at 428mb the wow folders were there and I was able to launch the game via the wow.exe file, and it has the little icon at the top saying that it is downloading game data. While it is a small win, I was able to do this previous to Tuesday as well, it stayed at 7% downloaded and when the Tuesday update came out it broke it all again.
In case it includes something you may not have tried.
Edit: do you have another computer you could try to see if its isolated to that PC? For example, I have a little old laptop, I could download WoW onto it (it would completely max out the hard drive but it would just fit) if I needed to and it would be bare bones; no extra software, only Microsoft’s security (which I could disable) and no other programs running but the system.
If you have another drive (IE D:) have you tried installing it there vs the C drive?
(just kind of spitballing here)…
Also how old of a computer are you talking about? What operating system? Are you on something new like Windows 11? or still in the dark ages with Windows 7? Windows 11 you really don’t need to do a disk defrag, but I remember back with Windows 7 I still did, and I’d end up with corrupted sectors sometimes on an older hard drive.
Something that worked for me was opening the launcher shortcut. Going to the compatibility tab. Ticking “run this program as administrator” and launching.
Any time there is a launcher update or an update to wow, d4, or cod. I was unable to play any of them for several days after the updates.
Found this fix and its been smooth sailing. Sometimes I have to fully close the app again and relaunch for a refresh.
