Again.
If File X for the Market Ward System is sized 75MB exactly.
SE Changes the code around but after compression and encryption the core file is still 75MB
You still are going to have to download it again.
Thats how it worked in FFXI as well.
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Your "seventeen minutes" is still more than three times what Blizzard and Trion are delivering for patches of the same size, however, so your post actually supports the idea that XIV's patcher takes too long, if simply to a lesser extant.
WoW, AION, Rift, and Sword 2 (and various others here and there) all currently do not give me these issues, all done through the same setup (as said earlier, looking at the patch sizes proportionately, Rift downloaded in five minutes as opposed to XIV's hour). I'm not saying it absolutely can't be an ISP/router/modem issue for the numerous people here who have issues, but that's still heavily on SE if the other various MMOs out there work fine with the same setups.
With as many people as have complained, with the wide variety of setups people have, that's quite a large amount of compatibility issues XIV has compared to other companies (particularly the much smaller ones like Trion, which SE should be head and shoulders above).
So whether it's the more likely issue of SE's patcher needing work, or simply your theory of a comedy of incompatibility issues, it's still not a standard among current MMOs and not acceptable, and fully within SE's power to fix.
TL;DR, don't go blamin' this on us, when our setups work just fine for everything else out there!
: D
Here's the easiest way to figure it out on your own!
Open up your FFXIV folder. If you're in XP, open the Search pane, otherwise, click into the search bar. Search for all files modified on 6/15/2011. In the results, select everything that's not a folder, then right-click and hit Properties.
Total filesize: 27.6 MB.
(Didn't really make sense)
uTorrent Client: http://www.utorrent.com/
The FF XIV Patch File torrents: C:\Users\[User Name]\Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV\downloads\ffxiv\48eca647\metainfo after you started the official patcher once
Save as in uTorrent: C:\Users\[User Name]\Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV\downloads\ffxiv