I also had this exact same issue ...
I resolved this like so:
1) manually download from one of the mirror sites listed on blizzard ( I think I picked fileshack or something ).
2) unzip file into your directory ( this should create the 3 mpq files ...
wow-final.MPQ ( ~ 6 MB )
wow-partial-1.MPQ ( ~ 250 MB )
wow-partial-2.MPQ ( ~ 22 MB )
3) manually run the updater ( BNUpdate I think it is ... not 100% ). This takes a long time ... like say 10 minutes give or take. What appeared to be happening for me was that a window appeared ( although it was empty except for the frame ). There were also a bunch of .temp files created ... after you have started up wow successfully, you can just delete them if the patcher doesn't clean up. Do not start wow prior to running the updater. If you do it will zero the patch *.mpq files and you will need to unzip and update again.
4) Start wow.
That should be all you need. Also, one thing I did notice, is that when you exit wow, frequently it would hang on exit. Normally I'd say this is only a minor irritation, however this will reset your ELUA flags, so that you need to accept every time. This is not cool. The cause of this, is a file called $wow_dir/WTF/RunOnce.wtf . Mine for example looked like this:
SET readTOS "-1"
SET readEULA "-1"
SET readScanning "-1"
SET readContest "-1"
SET checkAddonVersion "1"
The important pieces are readTOS and readEULA. All you need to do is remove this file ( I actually renamed it in case it was important ... but it turns out not ).
I also noticed that if you logout and go back to the main login screen, then click quit, the exit doesn't freeze ( pressing escape until exit does seem to however ).
Using:
Debian Etch / Crossover 6.0.0