This is from the last 2-3 days. Literally dozens of those file formats are being saved in the retail/data folder. Some are over 1GB of size. Uninstalled and installed the game without any difference. New installation repeated to save -again- dozens of those files in the same folder.
The new installation downloaded around 76GBs. Is this normal? I remember some months ago the main download was a lot less than that.
I repeat, this started up after last maintenance, last Tuesday. I have done nothing different to my system to consider that this issue is on my side. (Btw, I worked on Tech Support for more than 14 years).
Something is definitely wrong. Some posts have shown up talking about a non-ending “pre-release download” process. That was my case and the reason I began searching for answers. Been playing since 2006 and can’t remember anything like this.
when wow first started the install was around 40 GB (2005 or so). then the expansions came out (burning crusade to shadowlands) so the install files got bigger .the .idx and data.xxx is part of the game so removing them may stop the game from working and or they get replace (redownloaded) when running the game from the launcher…
I’m aware of that. I clearly remember the pre-release downloads process before expansions. But this is happening after the update. And there isn’t (as far as I’m concerned) any other expansion in queue. I got around 20 GBs of .idx and data.xxx files, that were all downloaded yesterday, Thursday, March 3, and today the 4th, in a process that didn’t end until I paused it. So I have to presume I was going to get more of those files.
i just had a look in the World of Warcraft … Data … Data folder .total of the files is size 76.1 GB (81,813,528,696 bytes) size on disc 76.1 GB (81,813,676,032 bytes) . every time there is an update or patch the .idx and data.xxx are replaced with new ones. some dated on 3/03/2022 — 2/03/2022 ---- 23/02/2022 and some data.xxx files are from 1/11/2021
Yeps. I found a handfull from 2021 in my initial search. But had around 20 files over 1 GB from 3/3/2022, which I find odd when the update was about 25% of that volume. Unless the update rewrites several other data.xxx files in the update. Any how, my WoW main folder was increased in size for more than 20 GBs compared to what it was some weeks ago. I know this because my SSD isn’t big and I keep checking the free space. And the “pre-release download” feature is still offering to keep downloading (which is the issue that brought me to look into the data folder). Well, downloading what? Updates were already performed.
Not sure if the pre-release option is being used now by default to deploy updates and we’re still getting some. In this case, it would be reasonable to be officially notified. Something doesn’t add up.
To those seeing this download going too slow, check the download speed settings in the Download section of the Game Settings in the Battlenet Agent (gear icon next to the “Play” button). Mine was set to 100KBs, which is year 2k modem speed. Very slow, but intended to be less intrusive to the bandwidth usage (wrong presumption if you’re willing to stop other internet activities to download the pre-release faster). You can adjust that value to something close to your present internet speed, or other alternative value if you need the whole bandwidth shared with something else. The file formats mentioned are part of the update process.