Disabling the WoW Downloader

I'm one of those people that always downloads and installs World of Warcraft patches manually because the integrated downloader uses a BitTorrent system. No doubt, BitTorrent is wonderful technology, but it has never worked that well for me, perhaps because it wreaks havoc with my firewall. I find grabbing the patches from a single dedicated source to be quicker and simpler, and it appears that I'm not alone. Unfortunately, as of patch 1.10 it has become a little more difficult to disable the automatic downloader, but there are instructions on the technical support forum for those willing to tinker with their registry to make it stop.