WoW 2.0 not caching, Fix

[Ghryphen]

Dear Blizzard and Readers,

This post points out that after patch 2.0, without corrective action on the user's part, the client doesn't cache WDB files anymore. It explains how to solve the problem and why it's important to solve it.

Symptom

When logging in, every time, a lot of the items placed on the action bars are red question marks for a few seconds. Also, when opening a crafting profession's window for the first time, delay is observed in loading the icon for items and list of ingredients. Other symptoms that indicate that the client is not performing caching and has to query the server for data with each login session.

Explanation and Solution

The old WDB folder is now gone with patch 2.0. The client is supposed to cache data in the "World of Warcraft\Cache\WDB\<locale>" folder, where <locale> depends on your client language. It's enGB for EU English players. However, during a standard installation and patching scenario, only "World of Warcraft\Cache" folder gets created, and the client doesn't automatically create its subfolders. This means that the client never saves cache files.

To force WoW to start saving cache files, manually create a WDB subfolder in Cache, i.e. make sure that a folder named "World of Warcraft\Cache\WDB" exists. The client will take care of the rest, create the locale specific subfolder and start saving files.

Why this is important

For starters, this improves the game experience of the end-user. However, more importantly, with so many players, all the clients querying the server for information that was supposed to be cached could lead to additional load on the servers. Only Blizzard knows the significance or fraction of this additional load, but it's important that we as users do everything we can to reduce load on the servers.

Edit: It appears that this may be an issue only on the Windows client and not Mac

http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=9523

[Ghryphen]

I confirmed this fix, create

C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Cache\WDB\enUS\

[Nizuttz]

Blizz fixed it with a client patch today.

[Stoke]

I saw that Elitist Jerks were getting credit for "discovering" this fix in the WoW General Forums..... Damn EJ.....

[Ghryphen]

You discover this stuff when you reverse engineer WoW in order to cheat and hack and see that there should be a folder where there isn't

[Stoke]

oh BURRRRRRRRNNNNNNNN!