WoW won't update

Support Mac Technical Support
347

Same issue here.
Mac OS Big Sur 11.6
iMac 27 inch, 2015

348

did you guy’s really think they would fix this on a WEEKEND

2 Likes
349

Thanks for the tip. Worked flawlessly and I’m back into grinding away.

350

My Specs

System: macOS BigSur 11.6.1
Battle.net app: 2.7.0.13177
Agent: 2.25.2 [7581] (2.25.2)

Overview

I too suffered from the bug described in this thread. I do not run Retail WoW just TBC and Classic, though, so YMMV. I tried the re-installation trick, which did work for a few launches and then like Freddie Kreuger the bug came back, bad sweater and all, for one more scare. I took a look at the Agent error logs and quickly found out what the problem was, at least on my system. I opened the /Users/Shared/Battle.net/Agent/Agent.7581/Logs folder and specifically looked at the AgentErrors-.log files in that directory. I opened the latest “AgentErrors-xxxxxxxxxTxxxxxx” log file and found the following:

[E 2021-11-14 23:24:00.0674] AgentAsAdmin failed to fix the file permissions of ‘/Applications/World of Warcraft/classic_era/WTF/gamecontrollerdb.txt’

Hmm. So I opened my /Applications/World of Warcraft/classic_era/WTF/ folder and WTF?? No gamecontrollerdb.txt file there in my WTF folder! Then I go one level up to my /Applications/World of Warcraft/classic_era/ folder. Here I found a file with the somewhat obtuse name of “WTF\gamecontrollerdb.txt” which really makes no sense. Looks like a bug to me in some file management code somewhere.

Workaround
Given what I learned above, the following steps worked for me and resolved my issues with permanent-update infinite loop of doom on macOS BigSur 11.6.1:

  1. Open the /Applications/World of Warcraft/classic_era folder (and/or classic if you play TBC as well like me) in Finder and look for a file named:
    “WTF/gamecontrollerdb.txt”
  2. Target acquired! Delete the file “WTF/gamecontrollerdb.txt” in Finder in both /Applications/World of Warcraft/classic_era and /Applications/World of Warcraft/classic
  3. (Re)launch the Battle.net app (if needed) and the app may ask again for your admin credentials. Enter them.
  4. Select TBC or Classic in the Game Version dropdown, and you should see a “Play” button just below. If its an update button, just click it again the update process should start and complete without an error.
  5. Journey once more into Azeroth!
  6. If you once again get the Log in as administrator error again in the future, repeat steps 1-5 above.

NB: The Agent on your system may be choking when setting permissions on a file or multiple files that are different from my system. If the workaround steps do not fix this for you, the only way you can determine the root cause of the problem on your system involves reading those Agent error log files I mentioned above. You may see log entries like:

AgentAsAdmin failed to fix the file permissions of ‘some random filename.xxx’

This will point you in the right direction as to what may be going wrong on your system if the workaround does not help you.

Epilogue
Hopefully this helps someone out! It has worked for me when other solutions did not.

BONUS: it did not require any chmod or chown commands entered in Terminal. I tried the chmod incantations on the Data folder and it did not work for me…perhaps I messed up the somatic components of the spell though…

Peace My Nerds!

351

It would be wonderful to get an update from customer service on this issue. Happy Monday everyone !

1 Like
352

Well hopefully this gets fixed today so we can jump into the anniversary stuff .

1 Like
353

Macbook Air 2015, running Monterey.

I am having a different issue, but apparently it is related (says Blizzard Customer Service) - essentially, my update is fine, but when I try and launch WoW out of Bnet, it never actually properly launches, the window doesn’t open, and eventually it quits and I’m back to Bnet screen.

After several days of tickets and a phone call with a rep, I’ve been told to basically sit tight and monitor the thread for whenever they fix “it” - also was told the people needed to fix “it” weren’t in on the weekends. But this issue has been going on for a week for me now.

354

Thanks, this worked perfectly!

355

For most users, it probably is just confused over previously created bad files. This as an example

[E 2021-11-15 16:47:31.0166] Failed to execute remote task: POST /admin
{
  "fix_permissions": {
    "attributes": 0,
    "behavior": 8176,
    "path": "/Applications/Games/World of Warcraft/_classic_/D:/_work/gfx_cvars.csv",
    "should_inherit": true
  }
}
 with error 2115
[E 2021-11-15 16:47:31.0166] AgentAsAdmin failed to fix the file permissions of '/Applications/Games/World of Warcraft/_classic_/D:/_work/gfx_cvars.csv'
[E 2021-11-15 16:47:31.0677] Failed to execute remote task: POST /admin
{
  "fix_permissions": {
    "attributes": 0,
    "behavior": 3504,
    "path": "/Applications/Games/World of Warcraft/_ptr_/WTF/gamecontrollerdb.txt",
    "should_inherit": true
  }
}
 with error 2115
[E 2021-11-15 16:47:31.0677] AgentAsAdmin failed to fix the file permissions of '/Applications/Games/World of Warcraft/_ptr_/WTF/gamecontrollerdb.txt'
[E 2021-11-15 16:47:33.0148] Failed to execute remote task: POST /admin
{
  "fix_permissions": {
    "attributes": 0,
    "behavior": 3504,
    "path": "/Applications/Games/World of Warcraft/_retail_/WTF/gamecontrollerdb.txt",
    "should_inherit": true
  }
}
 with error 2115
[E 2021-11-15 16:47:33.0148] AgentAsAdmin failed to fix the file permissions of '/Applications/Games/World of Warcraft/_retail_/WTF/gamecontrollerdb.txt'

Delete offending files, because they were badly created in first place., “gamecontrollerdb.txt” is a valid file, that should be inside wtf folder. a file named “WTF/gamecontrollerdb.txt” that’s in retail folder, is not valid.

356

This problem started on a Thurs. morning. The excuse that the right people are not in on the weekend is garbage. That had 2 full days before the weekend. Blizzard doesn’t hate Pallys, they hate Macs and their users. We’re just a pain in the a** to them. Imagine not being able to fix a problem that literally happened overnight by not regressing the sent data from a backup?

1 Like
357

Thanks for posting that, Antidemon - it helped me find my problem as well.

I had an old (unused) app from Wowhead, wowhead client.app sitting in my World of Warcraft folder. I had no idea it was even there, been there for years apparently.

Removing that unused wowhead client app made the battle.net Agent work.
Then my Play button worked for the first time in a week.

So I’m wondering why the battle.net Agent is trying to change permissions on everydangthing in the wow directory - and why this just started November 11.

This November change created issues for a lot of wow players, judging from the multiple forum threads on this topic.

358

It’s always done that. it’s literally what causes the fake updates bug. If ANYTHING in wow folder exists it doesn’t understand, it has to “fix” it. thus like 2 years running of fake patches since users might have wowhead stuff in there, curse client stuff in there. and yes even installed addons updating addons triggers the permission repair script/fake update

what’s new on Nov 11 is somehow they managed to issue an update that broke admin privileges so it fails to actually perform the permissions “repair”

They should really fix BOTH issues. Battle.net doesn’t need to fix every file that’s not part f wow. It’d be so simple for them to ignore interface folder for one, and two ignore any non wow files.

1 Like
359

I couldn’t find a gamecontrollerdb.txt file, but I did find the Agent log and saw that this file D:/_work/gfx_cvars.csv’ was the culprit. I deleted this file and now it seems to be working. It’s a pretty shoddy programming job and with no real fix except user interference, this is pretty disappointing.

2 Likes
360

does this truly work? im afraid I might mess something up and make problems worse

361

SOM tomorrow and still no fix?

1 Like
362

Same issue for days!

1 Like
363

Probably won’t see an update till tomorrow with the scheduled maintenance update. If even then…

1 Like
364

I’m just going to throw this out there. After two days of this problem with warcraft I realized that i was also unable to access SOME (as in, not all) websites and other weird problems. I went through all the troubleshooting for my internet connection, and finally called my really bogus but national ISP. Oh yes, there’s a known outage with lots of people reporting the same thing… So I gave up trying to solve things and later suddenly I had NO internet or phone. Still no ETA. Well long story short - about 18 hours later both returned and all the websites that hadn’t been working were available. And what do you know - after all the deleting and moving, reinstalling, moving more wow files - it all worked perfectly. I’m 95% sure it was all due to the crappy internet service. Thanks Consolidated. Just wanted to report the end of my story.

1 Like
365

While my fix that allows the game to do its “updates” and therefore lets me play, I still have to authorize Agent to change files with my computer password. That issue has not been solved for me so I’m still waiting on a patch to fix that.

1 Like
366

sus I can literally do anything else and play any other game including warcraft 3 only problem I have is not being able to update/play wow and wow classic on bent cuz agent thinks im not admin

2 Likes