Launcher cannot obtain patching information, Please check your internet connection

Since the last minor update, I have (had) been receiving this particular error when launching WoW;

“Launcher cannot obtain patching information, Please check your internet connection”

This was frustrating the hell out of me, seeing as I work in IT…

Turns out Internet Explorer was set to “offline mode“, as I use Firefox and was able to connect to the Internet it didn’t occur to me… Simply launching Microsoft Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe from Start >Run (or “Search Programs and Files” for Vista/7)) and unticking “work offline” did it for me.