I have the same problem with classic and retail. I done what the op did, no fix. Tried to listen to the fix from EXXAXION I could not understand what the utubber was talking about, I had a major stroke a few years back while I fixed my body after a lot of hard work, unfortunatly I can’t fix the damage to my brain so all I heard was wonk, wonk, wonk wonk. I also tried the new user account got it all done but could not find a way to open the new account anywhere. Guess I am done playing for now. Hope it is Blizz and they fix it.
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Initializing update for about 30 minutes…
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Seriously this. It would be nice if the front end launcher could be modified to actually tell us what it is doing, rather than sit on “Initializing” for 10+ minutes. Makes me think the client has frozen. How about a % gauge? This is like Microsoft and their installs that always pause and seem to hang at 99%…
Initializing loop came back for me. Was stuck in a loop for a solid hour until I tried something to fix it literally while writing this. Seems this looping problem come backs every single patch and then disappears randomly a few hours later. This is now the fourth (?) time it’s happened to me.
First time it was fixed by deleting the Battle.net program data. Second time it was flushing DNS. Third time it was reinstalling Battle.net. This time around I ended the Battle.net Update Agent task through task manager and that fixed it. No other games are installed and no anti-virus software is on this computer.
These fixes all seem completely random to me. I have to assume it’s something on Blizzard’s side especially considering how many people share these issues and have equally random solutions.
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Glad I’m not the only one having this issue. It’s only retail. I’ve done all steps and so has my wife. We’re done trying to get this fixed. I’m staying on classic. This has been an issue for some time with no results.
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Shouldn’t have to do all that every damn expansion. If only they’d listen or read these comments. Should just be able to open the game and play it. Issue after issue. It’s old.
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Nice, just had another 20 minute “Initializing” for no reason I could see.
Im having the same problem it keeps scaning or updating and it wont let me play WOW is this going to be fixed or is something going on?
Guess who’s back! I’m stuck in an initializing loop again today! I’ll edit this post with whatever fixes it this time!
Edit: 17+ minutes later… Closed Battle.net, ended the “Battle.net Update Agent” task in Task Manager (because closing Battle.net does not end this task) and then reopened Battle.net. About 3 minutes later, I’m out of the loop. Shorter loop than usual today, at least.
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Second option worked like a charm!! I backed up my Interface and WTF before I deleted and just copied them back afterwards. Nothing had to be reset!!
World of bugcraft or Bugs of warcraft?
Anyway same here. Stuck in loop but I reset the launcher and it worked. I think battlenet had to up date as well and wow wouldn’t work until it reset but no where did the reset prompt come up.
My update was also stuck on “Initializing…”. I noticed that the update agent was still using up my network in the task manager, so I decided to leave it there for about 40 minutes, it finally started patching.
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Hey guys,
i had the exact same issue and what fixed it for me was removing anything except bnet to the bottom right. i had my light app for the pc case, steam, fan app etc.
when turning them off it finally started for me and i can play now.
I am having this problem on my M1 Mac. Can you please tell me how you did this? How do you find or get another hard drive upon which to install the game? I feel like Blizz doesn’t focus very much on Macs. And I haven’t yet heard anything from Blizz; I have an active ticket which I am constantly adding to with more information on what is going on, and it’s nearly a week and no reply yet.
Seems like getting another hard drive is a tad extreme; shouldn’t they be able to fix this without that? (I already tried uninstalling the launcher and eliminating the files they specified.)
I had another hard drive lying around. So I simply disconnected the first, attached the second and did a complete re-install from scratch (the game was original on an external hard drive and is now on a different external hard drive).
Just coming here to say that I tried a lot of stuff and what worked originally was going to the program file and launching from there. But after the patch on Tuesday it wouldn’t work and when the realms would pop up it would say unavailable or something like that.
So I un-installed my anti-virus (I was using Webroot. I feel a little dumb for paying for it so I am just going to switch to Defender) and after un-installing it, it finally quit getting stuck on ‘Initializing’ and now it works! Yay!
Also forgot to mention I did a scan and repair. Not sure if that also contributed to it being fixed.
Yeah two days in a row now, I get an initializing quagmire lasting 20-30 minutes before I can play. It’s irritating opening the game only to have to sit and wait for whatever this is for so long.
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“I’ll quickly restart my game while people run back to this boss”
“Updating. 16mb.”
“Initializing” …till a minute ago. Thought I was bugged so I came here, turns out I’m not.
Still angry the game decided to hold me out for several minutes because of a random and stupid 16mb patch. 
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Just a heads up this is still happening.
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