I had a firewall confirguration problem which arose from my belated upgrade from Mac OS X 10.4 to 10.5. It prevented my WoW 3.1 patch from downloading. That is sort of understandable.

What is not understandable is that neither WoW nor the OS pointed it out to me!

Eventually, I discovred the problem on my own and after a number of tries, finally solved it.

It would not hurt Blizzard to tell you up front that your firewall settings are not correct and what to do to fix it. I mean, an operating system does not exactly keep a secret from applications what the version number is for the OS. Checking a firewall is not that hard. After all, Blizzard has the code that is using it - so all they have to do is try a piece of it.

What kind of burns me up is I won't be able to play WoW tonight if WoW 3.1 actually goes live today. Last time I checked, the 555 MB download was not even 2/3 done and I started last night.

I have a bunch of things I want to get done this month. So this hiccup kinda sucks.

Here is what i'm planning on this month:

1. Help a nice guildmate level up from 74 toward 80.
2. Level my shadow priest from 44 to 50 so he can raise his skill above 300 for Alchemy and Enchanting professions.
3. Get a runed Arcanite and Feliron rod made for my shadow priest to use for his enchanting.
4. Get my level 59 undead rogue tons of marks for Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin, and Warsong Gulch so it can redeem them at level 60 for excellent epics and nice blues.
5. Spend 5 minutes a day on my new Inscriber, learning a new minor inscription recipe each day.
6. Hand out armor kits to my friends over and over, since they upgrade their armor regularly.
7. Level my main to level 80. Imeediately after that happens, I want to start turning in Heavy Leather in order to obtain the high level Leatherworking recipes from the guy in front of the Leatherworking shop in Dalaran.

Yeah, leveling my main to 80 is my lowest priority because: a) it is so easy, b) obligation to help character(s) of my friend is substantial, c) getting Northrend greens I cannot D/E over and over is very aggrivating, d) having access to high level potions would be very nice.

Unfortunately, it looks like not even the 5 minute minor inscription research is going to get attended to today. The way the patch download is crawling along, I will be lucky if I can get onto WoW before breakfast tomorrow morning.