Do I need the original discs to install WoW on a new computer?

My boyfriend bought the World of Warcraft Battle Chest, Wrath of the Lich King, & Cataclysm. He downloaded them to our previous computer, but now we have a new one and when he took out the first disk from the battle chest he severely scratched it. Anyway, I tried putting in disk #2, and it said I couldn't do it without disk 1 (which is scratched!).

I've recently put in Wrath of the Lich King (it came with 2 CDs), and it said that I haven't downloaded the original and asked me if I wanted to downloaded. I clicked "yes" -- does that mean its downloading WoW & The Burning Crusade? Or do we need to buy it all again?

We just bought the whole set on June of this year...

Solution 1:

Wow and its expansions are registered to your Blizzard Battle.Net account. If you ever lose your disc, you can simply download the WoW downloader from Battle.Net's website, which will in turn download the game and the appropriate expansions.

Solution 2:

Ever since the revamped launch of Battle.net 2.0, Blizzard keeps tracks of which games you own on your battle.net account.

Among other things, this means that even if you lose the original discs, as long as you have registered your game to battle.net (Required for WoW and Starcraft 2), you are able to digitally download the entire game from the account management page!

Here's a link: Battle.net

From the account management page (make sure you're logged in, first!) you can click on any game attached to your account - which should include up through Cataclysm in your case - to access the game's page. There's a handy button, circled below, that does exactly what you're hoping for: download the entire game, no CDs required!

Solution 3:

You should be able to download any copies of World of Warcraft that you have purchased in-store or online from Battle.Net.

You first have to register your copy to your Battle.Net account by CD-key, which you can find on your CD case or in the game packaging. If you don't have an account I recommend getting one. From there you can download registered copies of your games. Downloading will be quite slow compared to installing from disk, but at least you will not have to rebuy anything you already have.

Note that you need to ensure that your account is not frozen. I did a transition to a new computer and froze my account during the transition, and I was unable to download World of Warcraft until I unfroze my account (by paying for game time). Here is what it will look like if your account is frozen:

Solution 4:

To answer the title: No, the game is just a client. The keys are tied to your battle.net account. The game can be freely downloaded from your battle.net page.

To answer your post: Yes it is downloading WoW and BC as well.

Interesting note: If you already know someone who has already installed WoW, you can simply copy the folder over. No need to wait for the whole game to download. Or since you have installed this, zip the whole folder and back it up somewhere. Even if it is outdated, when you start the Launcher, it will auto-update the game.