On desktop launcher play is clickable, click it, changed to Launching then after a few seconds returns to play, no game, no game services in task manager.
Tried launching from WoW.exe in install folder. Mouse changes to swirly loading for a few seconds then nothing, no services in task manager.
Tried scan repair, greyed out in options.
Not aware of anything else I can try, cant play 
sad
edit typos 
edit 2:
update, about 8 mins after first clicking play my PC goes into black screen and a WoW icon appears on the windows task bar then after another min (aprox) PC locks up and Ihave to turn the power off as PC completely unresponsive, latest nvidea drivers installed that Iām aware of nothing changed from when I played it from last night and it worked, small update to WoW today and bam unplayable for me
Edit 3:
selected another game and then re selected Wow ht play with task manager open saw services start and sit at 24mb ram and 400kb hdd usage waited 2 mins nothing happened killed those processes and that allowed me to run scan and repair. it was ver slow but has fixed whatever the issue was, it seemed to re DL the whole new patch data so maybe something was changed and not updated on my system and was causing version clash or something. could have been Xmas gremlins, stop feeding him after midnight guys 
Anyway for now Iām in.
I hope this helps someone else if they have the same issue.
Toodles
1 Like
I am having the same issue. As far as Iām aware nothing has changed since yesterday when everything was working fine.
Iāve tried everything suggested here (https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-11-10-world-of-warcraft-not-launching/) except clean boot (because I have had it working fine and clean boot is not a long-term solution) and nothing has helped.
I can click āplayā, it switches to ālaunchingā for a few seconds then disappears back to āPlayā. Looking in Task Manager, there is a āwow.exeā instance under the Battle.net group of programs and if I click play more than once, it adds another instance of it there, but nothing happens. There is no/minimal CPU and memory usage after the first couple of seconds of it being launched.
The āScan & Repairā function is greyed out if any instances of wow.exe are listed in that place in Task Manager, but reappear if I āEnd Processā.
Iāve had to resort to reinstalling the game (again, this is the second time it has happened for no apparent reason in the last month) but it takes a ridiculously long time to download and itās not an acceptable fix to have to do this every few weeks.
Blizz, is there anything else that can be tried? Or a way that I can get a standalone download of Wow to just run from the PC to reinstall instead of having to spend literal hours downloading it again each time?
1 Like
I have the same issue from time to time, no idea why.
I press play, and after a few seconds the play button appears again, I can hear my HDD spinning (louder than normal!)) and this goes on for about 3-5 minutes then the game will launch, sometimes if I clicked twice on play it will launch two clients.
Scan and Repair doesnāt appear to find any issues.
I donāt currently run from an SDD, I may switch that over once Iāve formatted my SSD (it has my old Windows install) but apart from this issue the game runs fine from the HDD.
1 Like
Ah interesting to hear it might start after a few minutes. If it happens again, maybe Iāll give it a little longer than I had been. (But hoping it doesnāt happen again!)
Looks like Iām in the hitplay wait 5 mins and then if lucky it will run club. scan and repair didnt work this time restarting hasnt fixed it maybe cancelling the sub and requesting a refund will get someones attentionā¦ hahhahahahahahah who am I kidding
Aaaaaaannnnnnnndddd again.
press play, button changes to launching then resets to play. nothing happens. services sit there taking resources but do nothing, kill services and restart both launcher and PC same.
If you are using multi base programs for rolling updates can you please ensure basic fixes are applied to all versions used? this is getting stupid now. Well has been stupid for years but you know what I mean.
edit: typos Tolok is also me
aaannnnndddd here we go again. 2 X rebooting pc play button does exactly as above but no game.
1 service which I have to kill then reboot not even game starting after 1 min delay.
just had a 5 min delay in starting while I was writing this, go go small indy company, pleased I stopped my sub and am only on remainder paid time
Same issue here. Trying to repair game. But looks like this is an issue from server side. Any devs to confirm?
This happens from time to time, but the main culprit for me was running battle.net as Administrator - WoW wonāt load specifically if I just exited another game prior to that (in my case, Guild Wars 2).
But making sure you are running battle.net as Admin is #1 thing
So glad its not just me. Had the same issue for some time. Tried reinstalling launcher a few times, tried to launch direct without using the launcher (To force the launcher to start) and nothing. Quitting launcher, then trying again can lead to having 2 clients showing. Get frustrated and mash start, 15 clients launching all at once after 15 mins!
As a general rule (not specific to WoW): if a program isnāt visibly launching (but some of its processes may appear in Taskmanager) then it usually means said program is being blocked from accessing system resources, like access to the display driver or similar, that itād need to run.
The āusual suspectsā in these cases are overly zealous security programs that may accidentally deem the game some form of threat and thus suppress its resource access, or missing/incorrect access permissions within the local user profile of the operating system . A quick test in this regard is to create a new, full-admin level user profile (instructions here) and give launching the game within said profile a try - if matters suddenly improve there is almost certainly something wrong with the previously utilized profile.
Hi Veadsarias, thanks for the reply, nope same. The only way I can play when this happens is to delete all the tools in the data folder as per the help section then I have to relocate every Blizz game and wait while they update (doesnt take long but when you have to do this every/everyother day its annoying so I have un installed everything I dont play regularly and am left with overwatch and WoW. Interstingly this only happens on WoW. It just happened again as I write this and with searching for threads its been about 15 mins and wow has just loaded. it seems that every time wow runs it adds a few mins to the delayed start up it was only a min or so at the start. I first made a thread at 5 mins waiting, then it was 10 mins now its 15 or so. At this rate come next year Iād have to have pressed play last week to get in to the game.
edit1
Found a thread that mentioned adding ā-d3d11ā to additional command line arguements in a very old post that a google search threw up today. added this andit seems to have worked, the play button reverts to play again but the game is starting in under 30 seconds like normal. Lets see how long that lasts.
Aaannnndddd here we go again, patch day yesterday (I dont recall seeing a DL or update but might have been a background one) and this issue comes back. Still have the -d3d11 thing in the āadditional command line arguementsā section.
Wow 3 replies per topic no matter how rellevant, oh well.
Yes again, played yesterday as above. log in today and press play and nothing so again I have to delete Blizzard tools in the data folder. Overwatch launches no problems, even installed CoD and that launches correctly its ONLY WOW that this occurs with.
Have same problem, have sent countless logs to support and never a reply or a fix.
The only way it have āmade it workā is to click it 3 times, walk away, come back in 10 mins, have 3 open tabs, close 2 of the 3, one is then playable!
OK did some testing, un installed and reinstalled the desktop launcher, no improvement.
Deleted the blizz desktop launcher (the whole folder) opened wow using the exe file, no issues loaded it several times, OW andCoD worked fine as normal.
re installed the desktop app and so far WoW boots in under 10 seconds like it always had. seems an update did something to a file in the desktop launcher that wasnt fixed by uninstalling. Iām guessing the filecausing this is in the blizz launcher folder and deleting the whole folder forces a new working version to be downloaded. I have no idea which file but so far multiple times of log off and on again different times of day and working as normal. if this changes Iāll update here assuming it happens again in under a month or the thread locks.
I hope this fixes the issue for others too if you try it. please do say if it worked for you or not as that will I hope help more people and possibly spark a fix.
Yesterday, after a week of not playing and a patch, worked first time and fast (usual speed), today, even after the tips above, no joy, currently on 5 mins after 3 clicks and nothing.
1 Like
Can you please fix this issue already? Nothing frustrates more than finally having time to play some WoW and the game wonāt even start! Restart does not help, killing launcher and wow (I can see it there) from taskmanager wonāt helpā¦ Excuse my french but I am p*ssed off right now!
2 Likes
First click of the play button is guaranteed to do nothing. On second click the game might launch as a background process and load up in lets say a period of 3 minutes whenever it so chooses. This is getting ridiculous, all these problems started with launch of the pre-expansion patch.
Game time stopped showing on launcher, even with sub canceled for numbers less than 30 days so you canāt offer an excuse it doesnāt show only under specific circumstances.
In addition, the game runs like garbage. Many players are experiencing low fps in desolate areas and memory leaks in a variety of group content. I almost forgot about the problem with scan and repair where the process corrupts your game files so you need to download 80GB all over again.
And then we have INITIALIZINGā¦ this usually takes 10 minutes at best.
1 Like
same problem and afther 4 times pressing start u end up afther a while with finaly 4 versions launching at the same time
4 Likes
I had 3 days of it working, then, a patch, and again, 15mins and serveral tabs. I have tried everything listed, i have submitted logs and no reply, other to direct me to how to send a log! Has anybody any other sugestions, broke down into simple steps for a none tech person like myself to follow.