I own WoW, and haven’t played in a few months, so I broke out my CDs. One of them has a nick in it that prevents the installation process from finishing.
But since you need an account/cd key to play the game, I was thinking that maybe there was a legit way to download the game content, and then just use my existing account info. Is there anything like that?
If not, what are my options?
Yes, from Blizzard. At least it was available right before Christmas, during their last “invite a friend” campaign.
You would be able to download it and give it the CD code when it asks.
If you don’t find it, just contact Blizzard Tech Support through their webpage. The first response you get is always a cookie cutter form but in general I’ve found them quite helpful.
Yeah, it’s on the website, top left, bottom, there’s a free trial link. Click through, then under ‘Create FREE 10-day trial account’ there are links for direct downloads. Or, if you have friends who play, grab their disks. Once it’s installed you can log in with your existing account.
Be warned, there’s a lot of patches. 2.0.1 alone was roughly 490 megs (we’re now at 2.0.3, which came out yesterday), and altogether it’s probably close to a full gig by now, if not over.
Great, thanks. I noticed the trial thing, and I was going to give it a try, but I thought it might be modified in some way as part of being a trial version, and I wasn’t sure I could use it.
They have help pages mentioning replacement CDs and stuff… you’d think they’d just mention this as an alternative. It’s weird that there’s no official mention of this being an alternative to installing from CD/DVD.
I’d double-check with them on the trial thing; they could easily have set it up such that the trial version can only be connected with a new account, and you wouldn’t want to go through all that hassle only to discover that.
Do you have any friends who play? Borrowing their CD seems like the easiest solution; you’d still be using your own unique account code to start play.
Daniel
Last I checked, you didn’t even need to have the CDs; you could pay to download it (equivalent cost of the CDs, but that was for a new account). If you have an existing acct, I’d just call their support if you can’t find it on the website. It tends to be pretty good (though I’d call early - I’m sure the late-night server queues increase their call volume - and call before the expansion comes out).