Cannot launch the game

Community General Discussion
1

I have tried several times to launch the game to no avail.

I tried scanning and repairing, restarting my PC, allowing firewall access and deleting my battle.net folder. All to no avail. Anyone else having this issue?

2

I am having the same issue. No problem launching any of the classic versions. Only retail will not launch. I’ve tried from the Battle.net launcher as well as manually from the exe. Nothing happens.

3

I am currently doing a completely fresh reinstall, hoping it works.

4

its prob caz so many are trying to log in at the same time

5

@Jamak It’s not that. The WoW client isn’t even loading when pressing “Play” on the launcher.

4 Likes
6

i had the same problem, i just reset my pc and it worked

edit: oh god, all the transmogs are off on the log in screen. that was a jump scare, lol

7

ive updated all drivers and restarted a couple times. i hit Launch and nothing happens

8

Having the same issue - went through tons of troubleshooting and nothing is working. I also had this same issue when trying to launch Beta and gave up

1 Like
9

I did notice in the task manager, after a fresh restart, that a “wow.exe” task was loaded, but nothing on the screen. I ended the task and tried again, with no success. Running a fixup/repair now.

10

Yep, already did that, no dice. About 1/4 done with the reinstall.

11

Are any of you having problems on Windows 7? Blizz updated their system requirements page today and it’s showing Windows 10 as the minimum. I’m presently in the process of getting Win 10 installed myself. Good luck…

12

I have windows 11 :frowning:

13

every patch, stuck at play, maybe too many ppl trying to log in, some stuck at character select, some getting dcd, here we are stuck at square 1.

14

I had an issue earlier with my antivirus blocking something in the new game files. The game was crashing with an “unexpected error” from the launcher. I had to put in an exception specifically for the launcher and game exe to get it to launch. Perhaps try turning off your antivirus for a moment and see if it launches.

15

for this game, i completely closed all/any antivirus/protection of any kind

16

A fresh install did nothing.

1 Like
17

I had the same problem and tried several things, but the one that fixed it for me was going into my antivirus and putting WoW on the exceptions list. Booted up just fine this time.
(Sadly, because I did an uninstall/reinstall, it means I have even more settings to fix now that I’m in. :C )

18

I even uninstalled the game and still nothing.

19

Think I figured out why nothing happens when I hit launch on the Battle.net interface. My C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft folder is completely empty. So, it would seem the “patch” had the effect of uninstalling my game…. Again, this is on a Windows 7 machine, so maybe that was the intent. Be nice if they’d warned me…

ETA - actually, my game is not installed on the C: drive, now that I look a bit further. It’s on the F: drive and game files are still present there, including wow.exe. When I try to run it manually (both right-click and “run as administrator” and simply double-clicking it), I get this message: “Wow.exe is not a valid win32 application”. Guessing this is because of the updated system requirements of Windows 10. So, back to the plan of upgrading my Win 7 to Win 10…

20

I opened a ticket, only for them to close it with a response that doesn’t answer anything, they even got my name wrong (probably copy pasted the response). Suffice to say, I cannot play the game until they resolve this issue.