If you are stuck in the same loop as everyone else who can not get World Of Warcraft Cataclysm to fully install, the trick seems to be to fully unintsall Wow and then reinstall World of Warcraft from scratch. Now there are world updates that you will see installed on top of other world files. There is a loop happening there. The trick is to delete those files after they install and just go straight to connecting to the server. before the game starts, Blizzard will patch your issue and replace the missing files with the new files that you were getting earlier. Seems patching on log in has more up to date files than what is on the server for full installs. Somewhere in there, there is a Weird looping issue going on (the full install ).
I have been hearing that people are having this issue from the download and from the install disk.
Blizzard has noticed the issue and are currently working on it.
And yes quite a few people have already maxed out.
Enjoy the game.
HFGL (have fun good luck)